Expanded Section, New Editor to Debut

Times Real Estate Editor Dick Turpin, who began his journalism career nearly half a century ago and has edited the real estate section for more than two decades, is retiring Tuesday.

Turpin will be succeeded by Dick Barnes, the city editor of The Times for the past five years. Barnes will oversee several changes in the section, including the introduction of color photography and a renewed focus on residential real estate in Southern California.

Turpin, 69, started his career as a reporter for the now-defunct Burbank Daily Review in 1941. After serving in the U.S. Marine Corps from 1942 to 1945, he returned to the Daily Review and was appointed city editor in 1946.

Turpin joined The Times in 1948 as a reporter and photographer. He was named its first education editor in 1957, a post he held for 10 years.

He was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1961 for a series of articles comparing American and Russian high school graduation exams, and was a member of the team of reporters whose coverage of the 1965 Watts riots and their aftermath won a Pulitzer for the newspaper in 1966.

Turpin was named real estate editor in 1967, charged with bringing editorial independence to a section that for years had been produced under the aegis of the advertising department. Under his leadership, the section was named best in the country three times by the National Assn. of Real Estate Editors and has consistently ranked in the top five.

Turpin will continue to contribute to the real estate section.

Barnes, 44, began his newspaper career in 1965 at the San Diego Union, where he worked as a reporter and editor. He joined The Times in 1972, and has worked as a copy editor, assistant foreign news editor and city editor of The Times’ editions in San Diego, Orange County and Los Angeles.

He left The Times in 1981 to become metropolitan editor of Times Mirror Co.’s Hartford (Conn.) Courant, a job he held until returning to The Times as city editor in 1984.

Barnes, who will report to Associate Editor Jean Sharley Taylor, will oversee an expanded and redesigned real estate section, which will debut March 5. Using color photography on Page 1, the section will focus on news, features, trends and issues of residential real estate.

Features on home improvement and gardening also will appear regularly, as will question-and-answer columns on real estate topics. Coverage of architecture and urban issues will be expanded, while coverage of commercial and industrial real estate will be enhanced and repackaged.