Corinne Purtill joins The Times as a science and medicine reporter

The following announcement was sent on behalf of Deputy Managing Editor Hector Becerra and Science and Medicine Editor Karen Kaplan:

Corinne Purtill has joined the Los Angeles Times as a reporter covering science and medicine.

She comes to The Times after a nearly three-year stint as a freelance journalist covering various aspects of the pandemic, including the biological reasons why lockdowns made people feel scatterbrained and what has been gained and lost by living so much of our lives on screens. Other noted stories examined the likelihood of humanity making itself extinct and how AI-driven robots can help care for the elderly.

Prior to that, Purtill spent five years in London as a senior reporter for Quartz and a senior correspondent for GlobalPost (now part of PRI). She also spent a year in Phnom Penh as a reporter and editor for the Cambodia Daily. Her newspaper experience in the States includes stints at the Arizona Republic and a chain of weekly local newspapers owned by the Washington Post Co. She graduated from Stanford University with a degree in English.

Purtill has experience with podcasting, narrative video and Instagram-based stories. She’s also an accomplished essayist and has written three books.

Having grown up in Huntington Beach, Purtill may be new to The Times, but The Times isn’t new to her.

“The Los Angeles Times was the newspaper on my breakfast table as a kid in Southern California,” she told The Times.

Purtill began her role Monday.