2017 Excellence Honoree

Executive Editor of The New York Times

Dean Baquet is executive editor of The New York Times, a position he assumed in May 2014. He serves in the highest ranked position in The Times’s newsroom and oversees The New York Times news report in all its various forms.

Before being named executive editor, Baquet was managing editor of The Times.  He previously served as Washington bureau chief for the paper from March 2007 to September 2011.  He rejoined The Times after several years at the Los Angeles Times, where he was editor of the newspaper since 2005, after serving as managing editor since 2000.

Previously, Baquet had been national editor of The New York Times since July 1995, after having served as deputy metro editor since May 1995.

Mr. Baquet joined The Times in April 1990 as a Metro reporter.  In May 1992, he became special projects editor for the business desk, and in January 1994, he held the same title, but operated out of the executive editor’s office.

Before joining The Times, he reported for the Chicago Tribune from December 1984 to March 1990, and before that, for The Times-Picayune in New Orleans for nearly seven years.

While at the Chicago Tribune, Mr. Baquet served as associate Metro editor for investigations and was chief investigative reporter, covering corruption in politics and the garbage-hauling industry.

While at the Chicago Tribune, he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting in March 1988 when he led a team of three in documenting corruption in the Chicago City Council, and was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in 1994 in the investigative reporting category. Baquet has also received numerous local and regional awards.

Born on Sept. 21, 1956, Baquet majored in English at Columbia University from 1974 to 1978.  He and his wife, Dylan, have one son, Ari.