Jacob Bernstein is a successful culture reporter for the Daily Beast, so he makes sense as a new addition on The New York Times Style section team, but it's his pedigree as much as his clip file that sells him. The writer is going to start freelancing for Style and will, for the moment, stay on at NewsBeast, Capital New York's Joe Pompeo reports. According to Pompeo, the 33-year-old son of Nora Ephron and Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein "fills a certain niche. Until last April, Chloe Malle, daughter of Candice Bergen and the late French filmmaker Louis Malle, was the star young freelancer and society insider in residence at Styles."

Now that Malle is at Vogue, Bernstein does seem like a good choice to fill that "society insider" role: Aside from his built-in family connections, he's fashionable and good looking, as the Observer reminded us by including him in its 50 Media Power-Bachelors last year. He's got some experience antagonizing the power-players, as his removed 2007 Women's Wear Daily profile of Nikki Finke shows. He also profiled The Times' own fashion critic Cathy Horyn and her "pointed pen." And he's got a long history of high-level scoops: Bernstein reportedly told a friend at summer camp when he was 9 that he was "100 percent sure" that former FBI deputy director Mark Felt was Deep Throat. A writer is born with instincts like that.

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Adam Martin