SPJ-NE: Dean Baquet on life at the NYT and the future of journalism

Dean Baquet leads a local investigative Times fellowship.

He previously served as executive editor for The New York Times from May 2014 until June 2022. During Baquet’s tenure as executive editor, The Times had significant audience and subscriber growth and won 18 Pulitzer Prizes, including two for Public Service. The Times reaches 100 million readers each month and had 6.7 million subscriptions to its print and digital news products as of the end of 2021.

Before being named executive editor, Mr. Baquet was managing editor of The Times. He previously served as Washington bureau chief for the paper from March 2007 to September 2011. Mr. Baquet rejoined The Times after several years at the Los Angeles Times, where he was editor of the newspaper since 2005, after serving as managing editor since 2000.
Previously, Mr. Baquet had been National editor of The New York Times since July 1995, after having served as deputy Metro editor since May 1995. Mr. Baquet joined The Times in April 1990 as a Metro reporter.

Before joining The Times, he reported for the Chicago Tribune from December 1984 to March 1990, and before that, for The Times-Picayune in New Orleans for nearly seven years.
While at the Chicago Tribune, Mr. Baquet served as associate Metro editor for investigations and was chief investigative reporter, covering corruption in politics and the garbage-hauling industry.

He was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting in March 1988 when he led a team of three in documenting corruption in the Chicago City Council, and was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in 1994 in the investigative reporting category. Mr. Baquet has also received numerous local and regional awards.

Mr. Baquet majored in English at Columbia University from 1974 to 1978.