Times Names Pulitzer Finalist as Editorial Page Editor

Andres Martinez, a journalist trained in history and law, has been appointed editor of the Los Angeles Times editorial page, the paper announced Monday.

Martinez currently serves on the editorial board of the New York Times, where he also works as an assistant editorial page editor.

Martinez, 38, will be responsible for the daily editorial page beginning in September, and will report to Michael Kinsley, who oversees the editorial and commentary pages.

Martinez holds the third-ranking editorial page position at the New York Times, where he has written editorials for the last four years.

He was a 2004 Pulitzer Prize finalist for a series of editorials in which he traveled the world to expose the harmful global effects of American agricultural trade policy.

Prior to his employment at the New York Times, Martinez worked as an editorial writer at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and as a reporter at the Wall Street Journal. Before working in journalism, Martinez pursued a law career in Washington, D.C., where he practiced communications law. He also served as a law clerk for a federal district judge in Dallas.

Martinez once chronicled his departure from the button-down worlds of the courtroom and the newsroom in a book entitled “24/7: Living It Up and Doubling Down in the New Las Vegas.” In that work, Martinez wrote a humorous and detailed account of how he left his job at the Wall Street Journal to gamble a $50,000 book advance in Las Vegas.

A native of Mexico, Martinez earned a bachelor’s degree in history from Yale University in 1988 and a master’s degree in Russian history from Stanford University in 1989. He graduated from Columbia University Law School in 1992.

The Times’ editorial board will now include all three of last year’s Pulitzer Prize finalists in editorial writing: Martinez, Andrew Malcolm and winner William R. Stall.