The following message was sent on behalf of the executive editor of the Los Angeles Times Kevin Merida and Editor-in-Chief Sara Yasin:
We are pleased to announce several changes to our staff that will help drive our ambitions and improve our reporting.
Ben Musig has been promoted to assistant managing editor for stories, a new role designed to drive creative approaches to our craft across the newsroom.
As we continue to drive the digital evolution of The Times, we are developing our ability to be fast, smart and distinctive in real time. The Fast Break Desk, our breaking news and trending topics team, has achieved notable success by responding immediately to the stories of the day. To complement these efforts, we must also develop unique, incremental coverage of the news and topics that matter most to our audience, in the formats they prefer and at a time that keeps us competitive and relevant.
Musig will work across departments to evoke such a signature narrative using a variety of forms, including interactives, re-enactments, profiles, photo and video essays, narratives, vignettes and other expressions of history. He will lead voice expansion, including essays and first-person writing. And he will oversee the first column, which will continue to be edited by Steve Padilla.
Since joining The Times in 2016, Musig’s unique story ideas and collaborative approach have played a role in some of the newsroom’s most original stories on topics like the effects of sea level rise and why donut boxes are pink. Stories he edited were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize and the Gerald Loeb Award, and won The Times Overall Honor in Business Coverage from the Society for the Advancement of Business Editing and Writing (SABEW). Prior to The Times, Mussig edited the San Francisco Chronicle and the New York Daily News. In his new role, he will obey Shelby Grad.
We are pleased to announce two promotions which will improve business coverage in The Times.
Jeff Bercovici was promoted to business editor. As deputy affairs editor specializing in technology, Bercovici has proven himself to be an incisive thinker with an eye for what he calls “oblique angles,” resulting in unique coverage of big stories that sets our newsroom apart. He led The Times’ small but mighty technical team to victory at SABEW in 2021 and played a key role in attracting new talent to our department. In addition to his editing, Bercovici wrote a number of memorable articles, feature columns and book reviews for The Times.
Before joining The Times in 2019, Bercovici served as Inc. magazine’s bureau chief. in San Francisco. He is a former reporter and author of Play On: The New Science of Elite Performance at Any Age. Berkovichi will report Scott Craftin the meantime, until a new editor-in-chief is appointed.
Nancy Rivera Brooks received the position of deputy editor for affairs. During her 40 years in the department, Rivera Brooks shaped the culture and reach of the Business desk. The editorial staff looks to Rivera Brooks for her deep understanding of the economy, real estate and the environment. Reporters throughout the department love her good management style and her brilliant line editing.
Member of the National Assn. of the Hispanic Journalists Hall of Fame, she has long been involved in tent work, as a reporter for The Times’ 1983 Pulitzer Prize-winning series on Latinos in Southern California, and as editor of this year’s Repowering the West project.
Together, they plan to build on the successful coverage of the Department for Work, Wealth and Economy. This includes recent business accomplishments such as Project Pico, investigating injustice at the Tesla factory, and explaining why the price of Arizona Iced Tea remains at 99 cents.
To strengthen coverage of the topics that matter most to our audience, several reporters will be transitioning in and out of the business in the coming weeks.
To expand the scope of responsibility, Kyra Feldman recently joined the business as an investigative reporter. Her project “Fumed Out” won a Loeb Award, and her first column on the death of the remote worker is a memorable example of business striving to illuminate the future of work on its own.
To increase a business’s ability to jump on the news of the day, a Times employee Jamie Dean to join the department as a general speaker. She impressed the editors with her thoughtful coverage of the labor movement in game companies and her skillful shoe leather reporting; fellow reporters praise her cooperative attitude.
To assemble a united team covering housing and homelessness, business reelerit reporters Andrew Khoury, Jack Fleming and Roger Vincent to join the California department. Khouri covers the housing market, Fleming is one of our most prolific and widely read writers, and Vincent’s commercial real estate expertise is unmatched in Southern California.
To reflect how platforms and content creators are changing the world of entertainment, a business technology reporter Brian Contreras join the Company Town team. Contreras has written powerfully about the misinformation directed at Latino Facebook users and the mental health dangers of pregnancy content on Instagram.
Bringing together journalists who report on similar topics will broaden the scope of our coverage, facilitate collaboration and allow us to better deploy our editorial strength in these vital areas.
