Reuters hires two from LA Times

Martin Howell, top news editor and deputy editor of the Americas for Reuters, sent out the following announcement on Friday:

I am delighted to announce we have hired two very talented, experienced and award-winning journalists to the top news team. Brian Thevenot and Lisa Girion are both coming to us from the Los Angeles Times, and will work alongside another Times alum, Sue Horton, in our LA office. This will provide regional balance for the top news team and allow us to handle late coverage more effectively. They will both start on Jan. 4.

Brian Thevenot was deputy business editor at the Los Angeles Times and before that assistant business editor. He directly managed reporters covering the auto industry, real estate and the California economy, and he ran page-one enterprise and breaking news coverage across the department.

Before that, he was business editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, assistant managing editor of the Texas Tribune, and both special projects editor and assistant city editor at the Times-Picayune of New Orleans.

As a Times-Picayune reporter, Brian played a key role in the newspaper’s two Pulitzer Prizes for Hurricane Katrina coverage, in breaking news and public service.

Among his seven bylines between the two entries, Brian co-wrote the first story debunking widely reported myths and rumors of unchecked violence after the flood. He later chronicled the Picayune reporters’ saga and the paper’s struggle to rebuild for American Journalism Review.

Brian edited stories that won two SABEW awards while at the L.A. Times and a Gerald Loeb Award while at the Post-Dispatch. At the Times-Picayune, he won National Headliner and Associated Press Sports Editors’ awards and edited a finalist for a 2009 Pulitzer Prize in local reporting. The latter was for an eight-part narrative on one-murder investigation – “Homicide 37: Seeking Justice for Lance.”

He began his career at the Philadelphia Inquirer in its South Jersey bureau, after getting a Bachelor’s of Journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia.

Brian and his wife, Kara, live in L.A.’s Highland Park neighborhood. They have three children — Rhodes, Eve and Mamie — and a puppy named Peanut. 

Lisa Girion spent 16 years at the LA Times, most recently as an investigative reporter in Metro, where she produced major stories focusing on the intersection of government, commerce, health and welfare for print, web and video.

Before that she was a staff writer at the paper covering the healthcare industry, and had a business law beat. She also helped launch a weekly business section covering the workplace.

Lisa was also at the Los Angeles Daily News for nine years, where she was City Editor, directing coverage and managing reporters and editors in Los Angeles, Sacramento and Washington, D.C. She also held the positions of Features Editor and Assistant City Editor after starting as a general assignment reporter.

She helped direct the Daily News’ coverage of the 1994 Los Angeles Earthquake, which left the paper without a newsroom for several days, and had unprecedented interviews inside San Quentin with condemned prisoners in advance of California’s first execution in a quarter of a century.

Her stories exposing the health insurance industry practice of rescission–dropping members with costly conditions—changed the reform debate, and are cited in the Affordable Care Act implementing regulations and featured in Frontline’s “Sick in America.”

And her story “Pipeline to Justice” about Unocal’s involvement in alleged human rights abuses in Myanmar was anthologized in the book “Global Muckraking: 100 Years of Investigative Journalism,” published in 2014. She was also co-author of the book “One Million Strong: The 1993 March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay and Bi-equal Rights.”

Her honors include the 2013 Documentary Project of the Year from Pictures of the Year International for her work on the LAT series “Dying for Relief” about prescription drug overdoses and the doctors and pharmacists who provided the drugs. Lisa also won the LAT’s Editors Prize for that series, and for other stories she has been a Gerald Loeb finalist and received a SABEW Overall Excellence award.

Lisa, who got a Bachelor of Science from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern, began her career at the Dallas Times Herald and also worked at the Wilmington News Journal. She lives in Southern California with her producer husband, two daughters and an Australian Cattle Dog named Bonzer.