Levi Pulkkinen, business team leader at the Seattle Times, sent out the following:
Dominic Gates will retire March 14, closing out an exceptional 22-year career at The Seattle Times. His has been an outstanding run, as an aerospace reporter, as a colleague, and as a key member of the business team.
Lauren Rosenblatt will take on the aerospace beat upon Dominic’s departure. Having excelled in covering Amazon since joining The Times three years ago, Lauren plays a crucial role in our Boeing coverage already, having been deeply involved in the coverage of last year’s Alaska Air blowout.
Dominic took an unconventional path to journalism. He grew up in Ireland, earned a degree in mathematics and taught calculus in Ireland and Zimbabwe (where he met freelance journalist Nina Shapiro, now his wife and fellow Seattle Times reporter). When they moved to Seattle in 1992, he started freelancing while working odd jobs. Eventually, he landed a job at The Industry Standard, a weekly IT business magazine, before coming to The Seattle Times in 2003.
Dominic led our coverage of the Boeing 737 MAX crashes in 2018 and 2019, uncovering failures at Boeing and the FAA and producing work that garnered a Pulitzer Prize for national reporting. Lately, he marshalled a reporting team examining the Jan. 5, 2024, blowout and its fallout, as well as a historic Machinists union strike and deep restructuring at Boeing.
Gates sent the following to his colleagues:
In 2003, the Seattle Times took a chance to hire a 48-year-old who had ambition but very meager journalism credentials. I’ll be forever grateful for the opportunity to forge this wonderful second career. It’s been a dream job. In the world of commercial jet manufacturing, we aren’t a regional newspaper player. With Boeing right here, we outpace the New York Times. We lead the world. That will continue.
I have had amazing support in all I’ve done. I’ve had just three direct editors in over two decades, all of them just terrific to work with. Along with the top editors at the paper, they’ve always had my back against outside pressure. Over the years my reporting and writing was boosted by key help from reporter colleagues and kept clean by copy editors. It was showcased superbly by top-class photographers, graphic artists, page designers and online producers. I’m proud of the great work we’ve done together. I couldn’t have done it without you.
