Michael Sigman is joining HITS as Consulting Editor. In this capacity, the veteran writer-editor-publisher-media consultant will conduct a series of profiles on highly influential figures in the development of the modern music biz.

The result, we hope, will be a rich and previously untold history of the industry that honors these execs—and also a way for us to fill up space in the mag and online without having to put down the bong.

Sigman is also president of Major Songs, a music publishing company that handles the catalogs of his late father Carl Sigman and several contemporary songwriters. Carl penned such immortal tunes as “It’s All In The Game,” “Pennsylvania 6-5000,” “Ebb Tide” and “Arrivederci Roma,” so Mike’s music-business experience begins pretty much at birth. Of course, if you’ve been reading the fascinating installments from his forthcoming book on hitsdailydouble.com, you know that already.

While still in high school in Great Neck, L.I. (where beginning in the seventh grade he was consistently outplayed in basketball by the much taller Lenny Beer), Sigman worked for The Richmond Organization cataloging the music publishing giant’s vast catalogue of pop, folk and rock songs. During the summers between college semesters at Bucknell, he worked as a reporter for Record World magazine, a leading music industry publication.

The day after he graduated Magna Cum Laude/Phi Beta Kappa from Bucknell, he began full-time work at RW and served as the magazine’s editor from 1972-82. It was there that he gave Beer the job that began the future HITS Editor in Chief’s career in the business, which will forever be a black mark on Mike’s resume and soul.

After a year as a consultant for CBS Records, he moved to Los Angeles in 1983 to become the publisher of LA Weekly, the nation’s largest alternative newsweekly, where he served from 1983-2002. He was also the founding publisher of OC Weekly, sister paper to LA Weekly, when it was launched in 1995.

Mike’s writing has appeared in Record World, LA Weekly, the L.A. Times, OC Weekly, The District Weekly, LA Style, The Bluegrass Special, Record Collector News, LA Progressive and other newspapers and magazines. He is the author of a biography of his father, currently writes a weekly blog for Huffingtonpost.com, and is finishing up the aforementioned book about his life in the music business.

He requested the title Consulting Editor because, as he noted in a curtly worded email, “I don’t want to sound like I’m too involved with you idiots.”