Times-Picayune editor Kovacs retires

The following excerpt announcement was sent out by The Times-Picayune:

Rene Sanchez, a Louisiana native and award-winning journalist, will be the next editor of The Times-Picayune, The Advocate and NOLA.com. The current editor, Peter Kovacs, who led the paper to an unprecedented expansion throughout southeast Louisiana and its first Pulitzer Prize, is retiring after nine years at the helm.

Sanchez, 56, is currently the editor of the Star Tribune in Minneapolis. He has led that newsroom for eight years and previously served as managing editor.

Sanchez grew up in Gentilly and graduated from Holy Cross High School and Loyola University New Orleans.

His first job in journalism was as a clerk in the sports department of The Times-Picayune, sitting near Kovacs, who was the night city editor at the time. He left New Orleans after college to work at The Washington Post, where he spent 17 years as a local and national reporter, before joining The Star Tribune in the hometown of his wife, Kerri Westenberg, who has been the paper’s longtime travel editor.