WSJ reporter Gay to join NY Times editorial board

New York Times editorial page editor James Bennet sent out the following announcement on Monday:

We’re delighted to announce Mara Gay will join the editorial board as our lead opinion writer on state and local affairs.

Mara arrives from The Wall Street Journal, where she has reported on the mayor and City Hall since 2013, covering daily life in New York City from local politics to the $88 billion budget, recovery after Hurricane Sandy, and the death of Eric Garner. Mara has also worked as a reporter for The New York Daily News, as a national enterprise reporter for The Daily, and as a fellow at the Atlantic. “Mara is ambitious and has fantastic ideas — she’s perpetually ahead of the curve on what’s happening in this city,” one of her references told us. “And she’s always a force for the good, on the beat and in the newsroom.”

The scope of our editorials encompasses the world. Washington’s turmoil has monopolized much of our attention. But New York is not only the Times’s home, it is where so many crucial national issues — housing and homeless, crime and criminal justice, education, inequality and diversity — play out daily. (Plus it has two of the more interesting political leaders in the country.) For years, Mara has been covering the city, the state and these issues with the passion and intelligence that she’ll surely bring to the board.

Mara, a New York native, got her start in opinion journalism at The Michigan Daily, where she penned a column about campus life and politics and served on the paper’s editorial board.