The following announcement was sent out by The New York Times assistant managing editor Marc Lacey:
With our desire to bring more readers into New York Times journalism as it’s breaking, through briefings, blogs, chats and more, it is clear that 2021 will be the Year of Live.
To help the newsroom build on all the journalistic successes of the past year, we’re creating a Live Team that will be based in New York but have tentacles across our operation. This group of editors and correspondents — working with both words and visuals — will help refine and expand upon the various Live forms we currently use to cover big stories and ensure that desks have the resources they need to take real-time journalism to the next level.
I’ll have more exciting news on the overall team soon, but today I’m introducing three new hires who will join this effort. They are creative and collaborative and have years of experience covering breaking news on every imaginable topic.
Meet Shashank Bengali, a veteran foreign correspondent for The Los Angeles Times who has had datelines from more than 60 countries. Previously, he worked at McClatchy Newspapers, where he was a national security editor in Washington, a bureau chief in Nairobi and a Middle East correspondent. As a senior editor/correspondent on Live, Shashank will help the strong editing team in Asia with its live coverage through the fall. Then he’ll relocate to London, where he’ll join an already powerful editing hub that handles live coverage for desks across the newsroom. Shashank began his career as a reporter at The Kansas City Star. He grew up in Cerritos, a Los Angeles suburb, and attended U.S.C. and Harvard.
We’re equally thrilled to welcome Andrés Rafael Martínez as a senior editor/correspondent based in New York. Andrés has been a senior editor at The Wall Street Journal, where he helped prepare the next generation of journalists by running The Journal’s internship program. That role followed years of experience as a reporter, editor and bureau chief at postings around the world for Bloomberg News. He began his career as a crime reporter in McAllen, Texas, at the Monitor newspaper on the border with Mexico. An alum of New York University and the Dow Jones Newspaper Fund, Andrés was born in Northern Virginia and his family is from Nicaragua.
Traci Carl will bring her 25 years as a reporter, editor and manager at The Associated Press to the Live team, where she’ll work as a deputy based in New York. After a stint on The A.P.’s international desk, she became bureau chief in Mexico and Central America. Later, she built a regional editing desk for The A.P. that oversaw news operations for 13 states west of the Rockies. Under her leadership, the West Desk pioneered The Latest, a new form of real-time filing that moved breaking news out faster for all customers, digital and print. She returned to New York in 2016 as international operations director and then became director of partnerships, digital and commercial. Her most recent role included working collaboratively with news, products and revenue to develop new business opportunities and reach new audiences. Traci, a graduate of the University of Kansas, lives in New Jersey, with her husband, two daughters and a dog named Piglet.
Please welcome Shashank, Andres and Traci, all of whom are starting in the days ahead.
— Marc
