NY Times taps Patel as director, U.G.C. and community

The New York Times has promoted Sona Patel to the post of director, User Generated Content and community.

Previously, she was senior social strategy and U.G.C. editor.

As per The Times, in her new role:

Sona will continue working on transforming our newsroom into one that more strongly, strategically and consistently develops long-term and lasting relationships with our readers. As we look to deepen engagement with our audiences on and off platform, she will expand her U.G.C. focus to oversee the Community team, finding ways to connect with readers through comments, callouts and virtual communities.

She’ll work closely with Marcia Loughran, our senior Community editor, and Erin Wright, our senior staff editor on Community, and the whole Community and Audience teams to improve our commenting experience, and increase the number of ways Times readers, listeners and viewers can interact with each other — and Times journalists — on our core platforms.

Sona will partner with teams in Product, Onboarding, Engagement and Marketing to bring more registered readers through the pipeline and expose them to the many conversations happening across our site.

Patel joined The Times in 2012 as a staff editor, social media. She is also an adjunct lecturer at California State University, Long Beach. She has also worked as a producer for social media at The Seattle Times. She was also with The San Luis Obispo Tribune for 3 years, joining as an intern and then serving as reporter/web producer.

She was also a reporter for City of Irvine, ICTV Channel 30.

Patel holds a Bachelor’s degree in literary journalism and Spanish from the University of California, Irvine.