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Word swept the Washington press corps today that Matea Gold of the Los Angeles Times bureau in D.C. is moving to the Post. She will cover the money and politics beat there for the WashPost. Before she started covering national politics and government, Gold covered the 2001 race for Los Angeles mayor in which James Hahn defeated Antonio Villaraiogsa. She then covered the Hahn Administration at City Hall for awhile, the City Council and the 2005 election in which Villaraigosa reversed the outcome on Hahn. Gold's career took hold in the LA Times newsrooms and she tells me it was a difficult call to move on. "It will be so incredibly hard to leave the LA Times – I’ve been here for more than 17 years, and this place is really my family. But it felt like the right move at the right time."
In response to the news hitting Twitter, Gold tweets:
Tx to all for the outpouring of good wishes! Incredibly hard to leave my LAT colleagues, but am excited to start a new chapter at the Post.
— Matea Gold (@mateagold) May 14, 2013
Gold, a former editor of the UCLA Daily Bruin, started at the LAT in 1996 and for a while covered media out of the New York bureau. Here's the internal memo at the Post:
We are thrilled to announce that Matea Gold will join The Post to write about money and politics -- a beat she has excelled at covering in recent years for the Washington bureau of the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune. A writer of precision and grace, Matea laid bare how one little-known organization functioned as a major cash turnstile for a network of conservative advocacy groups, revealed the coziness of Mitt Romney’s spending on campaign consultants and broke the news that the Obama campaign was evolving into Organizing for Action.
And those highlights are just from the past year.
A Times reporter since 1996, Matea has spent nearly a decade covering national and state politics – other assignments have included writing about the media from New York, where she captured a disgraced Dan Rather tilting at the windmills of CBS. She began her career at The Times as a beat reporter covering East Los Angeles, writing about immigration and gangs, and produced a three-part series about compulsive gambling. Now she tracks a different kind of high roller.
A graduate of UCLA, Matea was the editor in chief of the Daily Bruin.
She lives in the District with her husband and two daughters. Her first day with us will be June 10; please welcome her to The Post.
Cameron and Anne
Photo of Gold from Twitter
