Steve Padilla joins National desk as assistant editor

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

Here’s the memo to the staff from Deputy National Editor Ashley Dunn:

Steve Padilla has joined the National desk as an assistant National editor.

Steve joined the paper 22 years ago as the night cop reporter in the Valley Edition. In three years he was named an assistant city editor and has been editing ever since. Steve is known for his skill at editing narratives, and reporters throughout the building ask him to offer guidance on their stories.

Steve was the managing editor of the Valley Edition when it spearheaded the paper’s Pulitzer-winning coverage of the botched North Hollywood bank robbery in 1997. He was part of the editing team that handled the 2000 presidential election and, as a member of the Metro desk for the past eight years, edited a variety of subjects, including higher education and religion. For nearly two years he has overseen the paper’s military obituaries and was part of the team that created the California War Dead Database. This winter he helped plan web and broadsheet coverage of Barack Obama’s inauguration and edited a special section on presidential inaugurations.

Although he admits to being a bit of a technophobe, Steve has embraced the web. He helped launch the L.A. Now and L.A. Unleashed blogs and works with Andrew Malcolm on Top of The Ticket. He even live-blogged a recent presidential press conference.

Steve is a local product, originally from Alhambra and a graduate of USC, where he was editor of the Daily Trojan. Before joining The Times, he was a reporter with the San Diego Union and an editor with Hispanic Link Weekly Report, a newsletter on Latino affairs. On the non-journalistic front, he’s a musician -- a trained tenor -- and sometimes available for weddings.