David Lauter promoted to assistant managing editor

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Here’s the memo from Editor Russ Stanton announcing the California editor’s move to the masthead.

Colleagues:

David Lauter, California editor for the last year and a half, will join our masthead as an assistant managing editor, effective today.

This appointment reflects David’s skilled leadership of our largest and most important news-gathering operation, the local and California report. He has strengthened key beats and encouraged reporters and editors to pursue an ambitious agenda. And he has worked to maintain the high quality of our print report while reorganizing the department to maximize our reach on the Web, becoming a strong advocate for the importance of innovative online journalism. During his tenure, the Metro staff has become a leader in moving us into 24-hour online coverage and has shown that we can pursue excellence in our coverage while greatly expanding our Web traffic.

David is well known to most of you: In his almost 22 years at The Times, he has worked with the National, Foreign and Metro desks. He started in our Washington bureau in 1987 and covered the White House under George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. He covered two presidential campaigns and directed the reporting of a third. In eight years as a reporter, David had more than 700 A1 bylines, a total that’s hard to beat.

As an editor, David oversaw our coverage of the California gubernatorial recall election in 2003 and played a central role in guiding our work on the devastating wildfires that year, for which The Times won a Pulitzer Prize. As deputy foreign editor in 2006 and 2007, he helped guide our coverage of Iraq during some of the most difficult days for our Baghdad bureau.

Please join me in congratulating David on this well-deserved promotion.

Russ Stanton
Editor