LA Times wants to tap NY Times’ Baquet for top job

After Norm Pearlstine’s decision to step down as executive editor of the Los Angeles Times, the race to find a replacement accelerated.

The search is underway at the L.A. Times with the publication eyeing New York Times’ current executive editor Dean Baquet as one of the top candidates, reports Media Ink.

Baquet, who will reach the Times’ mandatory retirement mark of 65 next year, edited the West Coast daily between 2005 and 2006 before making his way back East the following year.

If hired, Baquet would be the first African-American to head the newspaper.

However, if Baquet does not accept the offer, as per sources, there are at least five insiders who are also expected to make the short list.

Baquet began his career at the States-Item. Then, after working in New Orleans for nearly a decade, he joined the Chicago Tribune as its deputy metropolitan editor and chief investigative reporter. Four years later he won a Pulitzer Prize.

In 1990 Baquet was hired at the New York Times and progressively took senior positions at the paper, including special projects editor for the business desk in 1994 and national editor in 1995.

In 2000, Baquet joined the L.A. Times as managing editor. In the five years that Baquet served, the paper won 13 Pulitzer Prizes. From there, he returned back to the New York Times as an assistant managing editor and Washington bureau chief in 2007 and was promoted to managing editor in 2011.

In 2014, he was named executive editor.