AP hires Pineda for climate and environment team

Associated Press climate and environment news director Peter Prengaman announced that Dorany Pineda will join AP to cover the intersection of Latinos, water, climate and environment in the U.S.

Prengaman writes:

Dorany, based in Los Angeles, comes to us from the Los Angeles Times, where she spent a year as an environmental reporter covering many issues related to the West’s historic drought. Most recently, she helped cover city hall.

At the Times since 2018, she also did stints as a general assignment reporter on the metro desk, covering breaking news, entertainment and books while juggling enterprise stories.

One story she did, on water affordability that impacts millions of Californians, was referenced by state Sen. Alex Padilla during an Assembly meeting on water affordability. Her enterprise pieces also led her to write about a family whose well went dry amid drought, farmworkers whose livelihoods have been devastated by flooding and California’s struggle to provide safe drinking water to all residents.

In 2020, the Latino Journalists of California named her the Emerging Latina Journalist of the Year and one of the most influential Latina journalists in the state.

Born and raised in southeast Los Angeles, Dorany says her interest in journalism, and covering Latino communities in general, came from things she saw growing up, from harmful pollution in some communities to a lack of access to clean water and air conditioning in others.

Dorany is a fluent Spanish speaker and in this role will write in both Spanish and English, working closely with both editors on the Latin American and Climate desks.

She will begin Jan. 22.