Scott Kraft named Times editor at large, enterprise journalism and special projects
Scott Kraft, who currently serves as a managing editor for the Los Angeles Times, will be taking on the newly created role of editor at large, enterprise journalism and special projects. He’ll continue reporting to Executive Editor Kevin Merida.
Kraft brings nearly four decades of experience at The Times — as a managing editor, deputy managing editor, national editor, and foreign and national correspondent — to this vital position developing and shepherding some of The Times’ most ambitious and distinctive work, and will build a new portfolio extending its journalism to original Times books.
“We are extremely fortunate to have Scott in this role,” Merida said. “Working alongside him for almost a year now I’ve seen what a quiet force he can be in championing and driving our best journalism and how central he is to maintaining our journalistic values and mission.”
Kraft has filed more than 1,100 stories for The Times, including on the release of Nelson Mandela and the end of apartheid in South Africa, the ill-fated U.S. military mission in Somalia, and the AIDS epidemic in Africa. He was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in feature writing while at the Associated Press and, since becoming an editor at The Times, has overseen or directed work that has won nine Pulitzer Prizes.
As editor at large, Kraft will keep some of his current responsibilities and expand on them, as The Times continues rolling out new initiatives and redefining what it means to be a modern American newspaper. He’ll oversee the Investigations department, standards and practices, contest entries, polling and survey research projects, and newsroom-wide reporting initiatives such as the mental health project. He will work closely with departments across the newsroom to elevate series such as “United States of California,” which was pioneered by the D.C. bureau, and Foreign’s “Global California.” Kraft will also lead an initiative to actively develop books that are an outgrowth of Times’ expertise and original reporting, in partnership with commercial book publishers.
