LA Times announces news roles for Fleishman and Zarembo

The following excerpt was sent out from the Los Angeles Times’ executive editor Kevin Merida and editor at large Scott Kraft:

We are excited to share the news that Jeffrey Fleishman, who has skillfully led our Foreign and National teams through more than two years of global wars and domestic strife, will be returning to writing later this month, bringing his exceptional eye to capturing the cultural cross-currents in America.

We are equally thrilled that Alan Zarembo, a gifted editor on Fleishman’s team and a former foreign correspondent, will become the new Foreign/National editor of The Times on Aug. 22.

Over the last seven years, Zarembo has edited some of our most important stories, including our coverage of Latin America, where he once served as the Mexico bureau chief for Newsweek.

He joined The Times in 2003 and spent a dozen years as a science writer and investigative reporter, covering a broad range of topics, from stem cells to organ transplantation, from the fertility industry to climate change.

He began his career as a local government reporter for the Daily News in Longview, Wash.

Now, a few words about Fleishman.

When Fleishman asked to return to reporting after nearly three years as an editor, we realized it was an opportunity to take advantage of another of his well-established gifts. He had come to editing from Calendar, where he was admired for his in-depth profiles and lyrical pieces on a nation in the midst of cultural change. Not surprisingly, he brought a foreign correspondent’s eye to that work.

Fleishman joined The Times in 2002 from the Rome bureau of the Philadelphia Inquirer and moved to Berlin, which he used as a base to cover the Gulf War and other major stories. Later, as our Cairo bureau chief, he led coverage of the 2011 Arab Spring revolution. Fleishman also has been a Pulitzer Prize finalist in feature writing and a Nieman fellow. He is the author of five novels — the latest, “Good Night, Forever,” the last part of a trilogy set in downtown Los Angeles, was published this month.