Hector Becerra — Deputy Managing Editor, California and Metro
Hector Becerra is the deputy managing editor for California and Metro, at the helm of our largest staff with a charge of refining its mission and mining for new coverage gold. He oversees the coalition of beats, teams and distinctive voices that comprise our signature local and statewide coverage — from the 88 cities in greater L.A., to our evolving approach to communities of color, investigative journalism and the narratives that define the contours of the most populous state in America.
An L.A. native, Becerra began his journalism career in The Times’ newsroom in 1999. For 15 years, he was a general assignment reporter, working on breaking news, narrative journalism, investigations and more. He stooped alongside strawberry pickers in vast fields on the Central Coast; he chronicled the story of a 14-year-old boy whose remains were found after a quarter-century in the chimney of an abandoned building in South L.A.; he wrote about Eddie Goldstein, the last Jewish person living in Boyle Heights who grew up there. He investigated corruption in the cities of Vernon, Cudahy and Lynwood and was part of the team that won the Pulitzer Prize for public service for its reporting on the city of Bell.
In 2015, he became an editor, leading coverage that included immigration and neighborhoods as well as beefing up our presence in rural California. He was promoted to city editor in 2017, running a team of reporters, organizing daily newsgathering and helping to generate ambitious and unique enterprise coverage. He was promoted to deputy managing editor in 2022.
