Two new editors named at WSJ

Almar Latour, the editor in chief of The Wall Street Journal Asia, sent out the following staff announcement earlier this week:

Two of our talented Asia editors, Andrew LaVallee and Duncan Mavin, are taking on exciting new challenges.

Duncan Mavin will become Asian Editor for Heard on The Street, based in Hong Kong. He will write Heard columns and edit Heards from our team in the region.

Duncan brings a wealth of experience to the role. As an editor in the Journal’s Hong Kong bureau since 2009, he worked both for WSJ.com and as Life & Style editor. He oversaw the redesign of the Life & Style section in The Wall Street Journal Asia and the launch of Scene Asia, the popular life & style blog.  Duncan also frequently authored the Managing in Asia Q&A and is among the best-sourced business journalists in the region. He was previously a foreign correspondent and financial services reporter at Canada’s Financial Post. From 1995 to 2005, Duncan was a chartered accountant in London and Toronto and worked at Deloitte, Morley Fund Management and Bank of Nova Scotia. He graduated from Durham University with a BA in History and an MA in Historical Research.

Andrew LaVallee will become Asia Editor for Life & Style, blogs and other free-content offerings. In his new position, Andrew will further expand our digital and print culture, wealth and luxury coverage in the region, working closely with reporters and editors in every corner of Asia, while continuing to be a go-to person for mobile and social-media initiatives.

Andrew is well prepared for his new role: He has been special projects editor for the Journal in Asia since March 2010, managing our expansion of the Real Time network into India, Japan, Korea and Southeast Asia, as well as new life & style, mobile and social-media initiatives in the region. Digital readership of all the blogs he helped launch runs in the millions of readers each months. He joined the Journal in 2006 and spent four years in the New York bureau covering telecoms, technology and media, most recently as the lead writer for Digits. He began his journalism career at the Patriot Ledger in Quincy, Mass.

In his pre-journalist life, he worked as a producer and project manager at DoubleClick and Razorfish, an architecture intern at Rogers Marvel and an artist’s assistant to Yoko Ono Lennon. Born in Portland, Maine, but raised in Mobile, Ala., he studied English and clarinet performance at Oberlin College and received a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University.

Duncan will report to Heard Editor Thorold Barker in New York. Andrew will report to Almar.