Randy Archibold, who used to be a reporter for the L.A. Times and the Daily News, is returning to town as a national correspondent for the New York Times. The memo follows the jump:

To the staff:

It's a huge pleasure to announce that Randy Archibold will be joining the national desk soon as a reporter in the Los Angeles bureau. Randy right now is deeply enmeshed in the coverage of the mayor's race in New York so it will likely be a couple of months before he fires up his computer on Wilshire Boulevard. But when he does, he will bring a wealth of experience, ability and style to our West Coast reporting team.

Randy joined the New York Times in 1998, spending his initial years
writing about education, particularly the New York City public school system. In 2000, he covered the Senate race between Hillary Clinton and Rick Lazio. And the following year, after the attack on the World Trade Center, he embarked on a touching series of stories called 125 Cedar Street, about a handful of people who had lived in the shadows of the towers and found themselves suddenly homeless. More recently, he has written about safety issues at the Indian Point nuclear power plant, the 2002 governor's race and John Edwards's presidential, and vice presidential, campaigns.

Before joining to The Times in 1998 Randy was an editor and reporter at The Los Angeles Times for five years and had worked as a reporter at The Los Angeles Daily News, The San Diego Tribune and newspapers in New Jersey. He is a 1987 graduate of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J. He lives in New Rochelle, N.Y. with his wife, Lucille, 3-year-old daughter, Lyla, and 11-month-old son, Miles.

Please join us in congratulating him on this appointment.

Jim Roberts and Alison Mitchell