Valerie Nelson and Terry Tang Named Op-Ed Editors

As part of the rebuilding of the Los Angeles Times, Executive Editor Norman Pearlstine, Editorial Page Editor Nicholas Goldberg and Op-Ed and Sunday Opinion Editor Sue Horton made the following announcement.

We are thrilled to announce that Valerie J. Nelson and Terry Tang have joined the op-ed team as editors.

Nelson has returned to the L.A. Times after four years at the Rand Corporation, where she was senior commentary editor. Prior to that, she had a long history at The Times, where she worked as deputy home editor, assistant features editor (where she helped launch the Outdoors section), features editor for the Valley edition and in many other roles, including obituary writer. Nelson returned to The Times just in time for Doris Day’s death, which gave her the opportunity to rewrite the top of the obituary she’d left behind. Nelson was also supervising editor of all features sections at the late, lamented Herald Examiner.

Nelson has a B.A. in journalism from USC (where she was editor of the Daily Trojan). She currently lives in Oak Park with her husband, deputy Metro editor Steve Clow. And she has climbed Mount Whitney, which gives her additional bragging rights over most of the rest of us.

Tang comes to us after spending two years as director of publications and editorial at the American Civil Liberties Union in New York. Prior to that, she was at the New York Times in many different roles, including op-ed editor, deputy editorial page editor and major beats editor on the metro desk. She has a B.A. from Yale and a J.D. from the NYU School of Law.

Her roots on the West Coast are also deep, however, as she grew up in Gardena (practically El Segundo-adjacent). Prior to going to the New York Times, she worked as an editorial writer and columnist at the Seattle Times and, before that, as a reporter at the Seattle Weekly.

Tang was a Nieman fellow in 1992.