Becerra named ME of LA Times

Los Angeles Times interim executive editor Terry Tang announced Tueaday that Hector Becerra has been promoted to managing editor of The Times.

Becerra will oversee daily newsgathering and editorial operations, beginning Tuesday. He will also work with Tang to examine all aspects of The Times’ report and editorial staffing as the newsroom undergoes a leadership transition and reorganization.

“His commitment to journalism, his integrity and his dedication to The Times have long earned him the deep respect of his colleagues,” Tang said of Becerra. “His ability to lead change and ensure that we’re focusing our resources on the issues and stories that matter most to our readers is precisely what we need to meet challenges now.”

Since 2022, Becerra has been deputy managing editor for California and Metro, leading the largest staff in The Times newsroom with a charge of refining its mission and enhancing its ability to make its news coverage indispensable to readers in the region.

He began his journalism career at The Times in 1999 and was a general assignment reporter for 15 years, covering breaking news and reporting and writing narrative stories on everything from crime to picking strawberries with migrant farmworkers. He investigated corruption in the cities of Vernon, Cudahy and Lynwood and was part of the team of reporters who won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for coverage of corruption in the city of Bell. He became a Metro editor in 2015 and was promoted to city editor in 2017, running a team of reporters, organizing daily newsgathering and helping to generate ambitious enterprise coverage, before being promoted to deputy managing editor.

Becerra is a native Angeleno who grew up in Boyle Heights and made his first foray into journalism as the editor of his college newspaper, the University Times at Cal State Los Angeles.