New York Times appoints Jia Lynn Yang as senior writer for Ideas franchise; Yang led National desk coverage of Covid, racial strife and political polarization since 2017

Colleagues,

Few National editors have presided over such a momentous span of our country’s history as Jia Lynn Yang.

She joined The Times as a deputy National editor early in President Trump’s first term and took over leadership of the National desk after the contentious 2020 presidential election. Covid. Racial strife. Mass shootings. Natural disasters. Jia Lynn helped lead distinguished coverage of them all.

Under her leadership, the desk captured the growing political polarization the nation is experiencing through creative storytelling and a relentless focus on the news. She was an empathetic manager and a deep thinker who produced a national report unmatched anywhere. National grew larger in the Yang era, expanding further in California, Texas and elsewhere in the country, and recently it added its own investigative team to dig even further into the big issues of the country.

Now, after nearly eight years on National, Jia Lynn will be moving to her next act, sharing some of the insights she gleaned on National over the years as a senior writer on our Ideas franchise. Working with Max Strasser, our Ideas editor, she’ll be producing deep, explanatory pieces on a wide variety of big issues facing our nation. As a veteran of the newsroom, she’ll also be helping Max identify timely stories on the ideas shaping our most critical beats, and collaborating with beat reporters and their editors.

Jia Lynn has always been a writer at heart. She spent many weekends upon her arrival at The Times in September 2017 producing her book, “One Mighty and Irresistible Tide: The Epic Struggle Over American Immigration, 1924-1965,” a political history of the landmark 1965 immigration law that allowed her family and many others to settle in this country. And before she became an editor at The Washington Post, she was a business reporter there and at Fortune magazine.

Jia Lynn, who will transition to her new gig this summer, leaves a desk that is stronger than ever, made up of correspondents and editors with deep knowledge of the country and an eagerness to understand it even more. We’ll have more to say about the desk’s future leadership but for now let’s all congratulate Jia Lynn on her successful tenure and her new adventure.

– Joe, Marc and Carolyn