NY Times announces changes to the Culture team

The following excerpt was sent out from The New York Times’ Sia Michel, Michael Cooper, Alicia DeSantis, Barbara Chai and David Malitz:

We are thrilled to announce the addition of three superb journalists to Culture from the Sports desk to expand on our pop culture, enterprise and visual journalism.

Jonathan Abrams is taking on a newly created reporting role focused on national culture news, a priority for the Culture desk.

Jonathan is the author of three books: “All the Pieces Matter,” an oral history of “The Wire”; “Boys Among Men,” which documents the National Basketball Association’s prep-to-pro generation of players from 1995 to 2005; and “The Come Up: An Oral History of the Rise of Hip-Hop” which documents hip-hop music’s rise, spread and impact from hundreds of interviews with artists, DJs, producers and executives. He was previously a sports reporter for the Times from 2008 to 2011, covering the N.B.A. and the Nets and Knicks, and worked for Grantland and Bleacher Report’s magazine before returning to the Times in 2020. He began his journalism career at The Los Angeles Times.

Elena Bergeron will be an assistant editor helping us grow our pop culture coverage, another priority for the Culture desk. She has already shown her ability to manage seismic storylines in the four years since she joined the Times as the National Football League and Sports of The Times editor.

As a writer, Elena contributed to Culture’s interactive marking hip-hop’s 50th anniversary, and has written about technology, pop culture and design for GQ, Fast Company, Fader and NPR.

Benjamin Hoffman will also be coming on board as a senior editor reporting to Alicia DeSantis to help scale our multimedia ambitions across the desks as well as story edit for Styles.

Ben, known for his design wizardry and creative problem-solving under deadline pressure, has worked on Sports since 2004 in a variety of roles, including baseball editor, night editor, writer and print designer. He played a large role in shifting Sports into a digital-first world, pioneering the desk’s live coverage, encouraging the adoption of alternative article formats, working to increase the speed of production and building out the coverage of the Westminster Dog Show (which will be moving with him to Styles).

Please join us in congratulating Jonathan, Elena and Ben on their new roles.