Los Angeles Times announces promotions for the multiplatform copy desk
Los Angeles Times Executive Editor Norman Pearlstine made the following announcement.
We’re pleased to announce some well-deserved promotions on the multiplatform copy desk.
John Penner is the News copy desk manager, and Blake Hennon is the Features copy desk manager. Jared Servantez is now a News copy desk lead, and Marina Levario is a Features copy desk lead.
Penner started at The Times in 1985 and has worked here continuously since 1992 in a variety of jobs, including as a reporter, assistant copy chief and copy editor for the Orange County, Valley/Ventura and L.A. main editions. He joined the Foreign/National copy desk in 2002 and has worked on our news coverage since then. He also writes occasionally for our news and Calendar sections. Penner worked as a freelance correspondent in 1992 in Prague in what was then Czechoslovakia. He began his journalism career in 1979 at the Anaheim Bulletin, where he was a sports writer, sports editor and news reporter. He is a graduate of Cal State Long Beach and did postgraduate studies there and at USC and the University of Houston.
Hennon joined The Times in 2005 as a member of the Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service, moving to the Features copy desk in 2007. He has been the lead slot for Travel, Image, Food, Saturday, The Envelope and Daily Calendar as well as special projects. He’s helped launch sections and redesigns, and he compiled style guides for “Star Wars” coverage and Food. He’s been part of several teams that earned ACES headline honors, and he recently won the L.A. Press Club’s headline award. After this year’s Emmys, he helped assemble a plan for future work-from-home awards nights. Hennon has taught copy editing at his alma mater, USC, dabbled in stand-up comedy and worked on Taschen’s “75 Years of Marvel: From the Golden Age to the Silver Screen.”
Servantez started with the News multiplatform copy desk as a Metpro fellow in 2016 (just a couple of weeks before election night!) and has been on that desk since, editing stories for California, National, Foreign and Business with a few guest appearances on the Features copy desk (including some Oscars nights). Before joining The Times, he was a Dow Jones News Fund intern and copy editor at the Mercury News and East Bay Times. A lifelong Southern Californian aside from that stint in the Bay Area, he grew up reading the San Diego Union-Tribune and studied print and digital journalism at USC, where he wrote, shot photographs and edited for the Daily Trojan, Neon Tommy and Annenberg Media.
Levario has worked at The Times since 2000, when she helped the paper transition from paste-up to digital while on the News design desk before moving to the Features/Entertainment copy desk. Before making her way to L.A., she was part of the Dallas Morning News Business copy desk and got her start in journalism at the El Paso Times. She’s fluent in Newsgate and Graphene oddities and Spanish.
