LAT hires in Washington

The memo to the staff today from L.A. Times Washington bureau chief Doyle McManus:

Colleagues:

We're delighted to announce two additions to the bureau:

Walter F. Roche Jr. will join the bureau as an investigative reporter in late May. Wally has been a projects reporter at the Baltimore Sun for the past eight years; before the Sun, he spent 13 years at the Philadelphia Inquirer, initially as bureau chief in Harrisburg and then as an investigative reporter. In an earlier life, he spent five years on television I-teams in Boston and New York. His undergraduate degree from Brandeis is in Theater Arts; he has an MPA from Harvard.

Mark Mazzetti will join the bureau in June to help cover the Pentagon. Mark is a senior editor at U.S. News and World Report, where he has covered national security and defense. Previously, he was a reporter for The Economist in Washington and Austin, Texas, from which base he covered the Bush campaign. His first job was as a research assistant to Ben Wattenberg. Mazzetti is a graduate of Duke University and Oxford University, where he was a Rotary Scholar.

Doyle