Los Angeles Times
Deputy Managing Editor & Creative Director

As Deputy Managing Editor and Creative Director at the Los Angeles Times, I oversee 60-plus editors, reporters and art directors across Lifestyle, Food, Entertainment and West Coast Experiences. I oversee all editorial creative direction for the L.A. Times. I was hired to help transform the content and design teams, with a clear goal: focus our resources on the work that reaches people and drives subscriptions. Over the past six years, I've helped turn underperforming departments into some of the most impactful in the newsroom — building new brands, launching new formats and transforming how the paper looks and feels.


Content
Lifestyle & West Coast Experiences

When I began managing the Lifestyle and West Coast Experiences teams, I was hyper focused on our audience. I used our data to figure out what readers actually wanted from us, and I encouraged my team to do the same. The results followed. Today, some of our reporters convert more readers to subscribers than anyone else in the newsroom. The shift came from a simple editorial emphasis: utility journalism. Guides, recommendations, things to do — content that gives readers a reason to come back and a reason to subscribe. But utility isn't all we do. We also identified specific areas of deep reader interest that consistently outperform, from ADU coverage to stories about the California desert.

I'm always looking for ways to expand what we offer readers and find new entry points into our journalism. When I noticed that plants and gardening content consistently overperformed, I knew it was something we could uniquely own as the Los Angeles Times. In my first few months at the paper, I launched L.A. Times Plants as a sub brand. We expanded our digital and print coverage, created an Instagram, and eventually began publishing a monthly newsletter.

A few other things I'm proud of:

  • My team was the first in the newsroom to fully embrace our List and Map story format, which converts readers at a much higher rate than other story forms

  • A collaboration between L.A. Times Plants and P.F. Candle Co., a local LA company, producing scents inspired by California native plants

  • Launched The Wild, an outdoors newsletter

  • For our biggest projects, including 101 Best West Coast Experiences, we published zines that we sell online and also at L.A. Times events

One thing I've worked hard to instill in my teams is that a great idea for a story is only part of the job. The reporting is the foundation. But how the work is packaged and presented is what determines whether anyone actually sees it. A headline that makes you click. A photo, illustration or video that stops you mid-scroll. I push my teams to care about all of it.

Food

Food is one of the most powerful drivers of subscriptions we have at the Times. I had the team double down on dining and authoritative recommendations, the kind of deeply reported guidance that only the Times can provide. A small team, they punch well above their weight.

The guides and recommendations we publish aren't just popular, they're trusted. Readers come to Times Food because they know that when we tell them where to eat, we've done the work. That reputation took years to build and it's something I've worked hard to protect and strengthen.

A few highlights:

  • 101 Best Restaurants is consistently one of the top performing projects across the entire paper, year after year

  • Launched a line of L.A. Times Food merch, available on the site and at L.A. Times food events

  • Launched a collaboration with spice company Burlap & Barrel that brought a trio of spices inspired by the cuisine of Los Angeles into our readers’ kitchens

Creative Direction

When I became Creative Director, I had one guiding principle: the Los Angeles Times should look like Los Angeles. The visual identity didn't yet reflect the city, its energy, its color, its diversity of voices and perspectives. I wanted to change that.

We began working with illustrators who live and work in LA, bringing a local perspective to the paper. The color palette got brighter. The energy got looser and more alive. The work started to reflect our vibrant city.

The team evolved too. What was once a group of layout editors is now a department full of art directors, talented people who can illustrate, assign illustration and bring creative vision to our work.

The L.A. Times is more vibrant, more visually ambitious and more distinctly itself than it was six years ago.

A few other things I've had a hand in along the way:

  • Relaunched Image magazine, transforming it from a printed broadsheet into a glossy magazine with a complete redesign

  • Relaunched Envelope magazine with a new logo, branding and style guide

  • Helped plan and participate in L.A. Times events including the Festival of Books, Food Bowl and 101 Best Restaurants

  • Participated in the Sulzberger Executive Leadership Program at Columbia, with a focus on expanding utility guides for readers