Los Angeles Times Creative Director & Deputy Managing Editor
I oversee both content strategy and visual presentation. The work below was created by the teams I lead at the Los Angeles Times. The stories we tell and the way the paper looks are fundamentally different than they were before I arrived. Our work is more reflective of Los Angeles, more visually compelling and more focused on what readers actually want. I shaped it all through hiring, direction, editing and a lot of feedback along the way.
Lifestyle & West Coast Experiences
When I began managing the Lifestyle and West Coast Experiences teams, I was hyper focused on our audience. I used 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