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I've already noted the LAT's addition of Rob Greene and Matt Welch (his job is actually assistant editorial page editor.) Today Andrés Martinez posted his memo to the staff and it includes some other new names on the Editorial Board. By the way, that title sounds like more than it is: that's just the group that discusses what the paper's editorials will say, subject to veto by publisher Jeff Johnson. They might also shape the Current section, but they have no role in the Times' news coverage. Most Times reporters and editors don't know who is on the board.
Also, Nona Yates is joining the West magazine staff as research editor. Turn the page for both memos:
* Updated: (12:40 pm) Today's Guardian says that Financial Times defense correspondent Peter Spiegel is joining the LAT to cover the Pentagon. (some facts corrected)
To: The Staff
From: Andres Martinez, Editorial Page Editor
I am pleased to announce a number of new additions to the editorial board of the Los Angeles Times:
Matt Welch today joined the editorial board as the assistant editorial page editor. Matt, a native of Long Beach, comes to us from Reason magazine, where he was an associate editor, and from his own 4-year-old blog. Prior to that, Matt was a U.S.-based correspondent for Toronto's National Post, and he has also been a prolific freelance contributor to other publications, including our newspaper. Matt worked with former Mayor Richard Riordan on the prototype issue of the still-born L.A. Examiner. In the early 1990s, Matt was the founder and editor of Prognosis, the first independent English-language newspaper in Prague. He then moved to Budapest, where he was the managing editor of the Budapest Business Journal.
Dan Costello joined the board earlier this month as an editorial writer. He came to the newspaper in 2004 to cover healthcare. Dan was also a Kaiser Family Foundation Healthcare Journalism Fellow, and in that capacity he delved into the nationwide breakdown of the employer-based health insurance model. Dan was a general assignment reporter for The Wall Street Journal for five years. He also spent two years working on Wall Street, and has worked in Africa on a documentary project on refugee camps. Dan is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied economics and Japanese.
Rob Greene will be joining the board next month, as an editorial writer on local politics. Rob comes to us from LA Weekly, where he has written about local politics since April 2003. Previously, Rob was a staff writer and associate-editor at the downtown Metropolitan News-Enterprise. Rob is a recovering attorney who practiced business law at a Los Angeles firm. He grew up in Woodland Hills, and majored in English at USC and went to law school at Georgetown University. He starts on Feb. 13.
Eryn Brown has joined the editorial board as an editorial writer. Eryn has been a freelance journalist based in Los Angeles for the last three years. From 1996 to 2003, she was a senior writer at Fortune Magazine based in New York. Prior to that, Eryn was a researcher and editor at PC magazine. Eryn grew up in Atlanta, and studied American history and literature at Harvard University.
Seth Faison, a writer based in Santa Monica, joined the editorial board earlier this month as a three-month visiting fellow. Seth lived in China for 12 years. He covered the 1989 Tiananmen massacre for Hong Kong's South China Morning Post, and then joined the New York Times in 1991. As a metro reporter, he was on the Pulitzer-Prize winning team that covered the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993. In 1995, he was named the NYT's Shanghai bureau chief, a position he held for five years. Seth wrote a book, "South of the Clouds: Exploring the Hidden Realms of China," published in 2004, about his fascination with that nation. The Los Angeles Times review called it "an utterly human book, a stunning and delightful complement to his industrious newspaper dispatches." Seth is a graduate of Wesleyan College, where he studied European intellectual history.
And on Yates:
To: The Staff
From: Rick Wartzman, West Editor
I am pleased to announce that Nona Yates is joining West, the Sunday magazine, as research editor.
In her new role, Nona will use her deep reporting skills to help oversee West's fact-checking operation. She also will be called upon to assist with special reporting projects. And she will be intimately involved in shaping some of the six new weekly front-of-the-book features that will run in West when it launches Feb. 5.
Nona, who has a deep passion for and knowledge of California history, is the perfect choice for this important position. She started her career at The Times in the Editorial Library in 1983 and then moved on to Metro as a researcher on the state and specialist desk in 1992. From Metro, she moved to the Business section and then to National.
Working closely with some of the best reporters and editors across the paper, she has contributed to numerous prize-winning stories, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the 1994 Northridge earthquake. Most recently, Nona has had a hand in the paper's coverage of terrorism, the Iraq war and Hurricane Katrina. In 2001, she was the winner of a Times Editorial Award in the support-staff category.
Nona has a humanities degree from Cal State Northridge and a master's in library and information science from UCLA.
Please join me in wishing her great success in her new job.