Gordon Cox made his debut Aug. 29 as the new theatre columnist for New York Newsday. Cox, a regular contributor to Newsday, has written theatre features for the paper in the past. His first column looked at the current financial performance of Broadway. Cox replaces Patrick Pacheco, a well known figure in theatre circles, who stepped down as the longtime author of the "Play by Play" theatre column to edit Clear Channel Entertainment's new theatre quarterly, Show People.

"Play by Play" runs every Thursday in Newsday and is one of three major theatre columns which appear in the New York dailies. The others are the Michael Riedel's Wednesday and Friday columns in the New York Post and New York Times' Friday "On Stage and Off," which was, until recently, written by Jesse McKinley. Though the theatre season is about to begin in earnest, the Times has yet to name a replacement for McKinley. Several calls to the Times' culture desk have gone unreturned.

—By Robert Simonson