Laura Blasey joins Los Angeles Times as a newsletters editor
Los Angeles Times Executive Editor Norman Pearlstine, Managing Editor Scott Kraft and Deputy Managing Editor Sewell Chan made the following announcement.
We are happy to announce that Laura Blasey, an energetic and entrepreneurial journalist, is joining our newsletters team as a multiplatform editor, based in Washington.
Our 21 daily and weekly newsletters reach hundreds of thousands of readers, bring in significant advertising revenue and have driven substantial subscription growth. Laura will work with editors Scott Sandell and Sam Schulz and product manager Kim Bode to shape the tone, voice and reach of our newsletters. She will be the final set of eyes before Today’s Headlines and Essential California arrive in inboxes each morning.
Laura started at Newsday in 2015 and quickly graduated from intern to trending-news reporter, using social media and metrics to cover diverse Long Island communities through experimental stories, sidebars and explainers. Last year, she became the writer, voice and producer of Newsday’s Daily Briefing, an audio report delivered via Alexa, Amazon’s virtual assistant.
Before Newsday, Laura completed internships at the Frederick News-Post in Frederick, Md., writing about open homicide cases and the Civil War Battle of Monocacy.
A native of Montgomery County, Md., Laura studied multiplatform journalism at the University of Maryland. As editor in chief of the Diamondback, she oversaw the student newspaper’s transition from a daily into a weekly, with a focus on digital production.
Laura lives in Washington with her fiancé and a rescue dog. She starts on Dec. 30.
As we welcome Laura, we want to express our gratitude to Patrick Duprey, who has helped keep our newsletter operation afloat since 2015. Working as California slept, Patrick updated our newsletters with major news, and has been a vital backstop on everything from copy editing to ad placements to performance metrics. Remarkably, he did this while completing his studies at Albany Law School and passing the New York State Bar. Following a judicial clerkship in New Haven, Conn., Patrick has joined Osen LLC, a firm in Hackensack, N.J., that works on civil counterterrorism litigation. He will also serve in the U.S. Army Reserve JAG Corps. We wish Patrick well in his new career.
