LA Times loses another reporter to BuzzFeed

The latest staff writer to jump ship at the Los Angeles Times is Metro projects reporter Jessica Garrison. She's going to be an investigative reporter at BuzzFeed. Back in January, another LAT veteran, Ken Bensinger, resigned to become an investigative reporter in BuzzFeed's Beverly Boulevard bureau. Here is the editors' memo on Garrison, a former City Hall reporter for the Times.

Sent: Tuesday, April 22, 2014 2:45 PM
To: yyeditall
Subject: Message from Davan Maharaj and Marc Duvoisin re: Jessica Garrison

To the staff:

After 14 years and 1,436 bylines, Jessica Garrison is leaving the Los Angeles Times.

Jessica has reported on conjoined twins, local politics, fires and floods. She’s covered City Hall, the courts, education and the battle over gay marriage in California.

Now she’s off to BuzzFeed to do serious journalism. Seriously. She’s going to be an investigative reporter.

The web just got a bit smarter and more substantive.

Jessica’s name first appeared in The Times in 1998, in a contributing line. She was a reporter for a Times community newspaper in Santa Monica, and she happened to attend a meeting where then-City Councilman Richard Alatorre talked about receiving drug treatment for cocaine use. Jessica fed her notes to Robert Lopez and Rich Connell, who got the news into the paper.

It was the first of many times Jessica would find great material and know exactly what to do with it.

As a Times staff reporter since 2000, she has shown flair as a narrative writer, mettle as an investigator and a generosity of spirit that has made her as many friends as she has bylines.

Please join us in wishing her the best.

Davan and Marc

That's editor Davan Maharaj and managing editor Marc Duvoisin; for some reason they co-sign the newsroom memos.