People

When the Chicago Sun-Times announced a nationwide search to replace Ann Landers last February, Wall Street Journal Reporter Jeffrey Zaslow, 28, decided to get the inside scoop by becoming one of the 12,000 applicants. "I was looking for an angle," he recalls. Zaslow not only got the story, he got the job. Beginning July 1, the paper will feature not one but two successors to the nation's best-known advice columnist, who will continue to write her own column at the rival Chicago Tribune. The other lucky selectee is Diane Crowley, 47, a divorced lawyer with two children, whose late mother Ruth was "the original creator of the Ann Landers column," according to Sun-Times Publisher Robert Page. Crowley's law practice has given her "a lot of experience in solving problems for people," she notes. "I've done divorces. I've done adoptions . . ." Her column, called "Your Problems," is expected to dispense wisdom in the traditional vein, while Zaslow's "All That Zazz" will be, in his own words, more "off-the-wall." Says the soon-to-be married bachelor: "Some days I might just give unsolicited advice to the famous." Once a reporter, always a reporter.