The New York Times names Dean Murphy, Hannah Fairfield to lead new senior Enterprise team; appointments aim to coordinate investigative journalism across newsroom departments

They will play critical roles in maintaining our competitive edge and in coordinating, driving and vetting enterprise and investigative work across the newsroom. Read more in this note from Jim Yardley.

Enterprise and investigative journalism are core pillars of our news report and central to our mission as an independent news organization. Across all of our departments, we produce some of the finest enterprise work in journalism.

Now we’re establishing a senior Enterprise team to maintain our competitive edge and to coordinate, drive and vet enterprise and investigative work across the newsroom. I’m thrilled to announce that two of our most experienced editors, Dean Murphy and Hannah Fairfield, will play critical roles in leading this effort, helping me with enterprise coverage across the newsroom, and running the daily enterprise meeting. A third position will be posted and open to applicants.

The goal of this team is to provide clear points of contact for desk editors handling major enterprise pieces; to engage early and encourage visual approaches to our most ambitious work; and to better coordinate enterprise coverage on the broad themes that cross departmental lines.

Our dynamism flows upward from our departments, which are engines of creativity, consistently producing ambitious, groundbreaking work. That will not change, and this new team will provide a structure that helps ensure the best ideas turn into signature journalism.

First, Dean Murphy. In nearly 25 years at The Times, Dean has done everything, beginning as a political reporter in California and New York before moving to editing, first as a deputy on National. He was Business editor for four years; he spent more than a year overseeing weekends; and for the last six years he has partnered with Rebecca Corbett to run the Investigations department. He has been involved in winning six Pulitzer Prizes as a reporter or editor.

He is a great colleague, a smiling contrarian who usually asks the most penetrating question at any meeting, and also a lot of fun. His reporters love him, and he knows how to bring editors together and then bring out their best work. In recent years, he was involved in the Pulitzer Prize-winning project exposing lethal police traffic stops and in-custody deaths, as well as last year’s investigation into Instagram child influencers. He is already engaged with National, Graphics, Business, Washington and other departments in helping to coordinate our superb coverage of the fires in Los Angeles.

Previously, at The Los Angeles Times, Dean was a state reporter based in Los Angeles, the bureau chief in Warsaw, Poland, and the bureau chief in Johannesburg, South Africa, where he was honored as foreign correspondent of the year by the Society of Professional Journalists. He is also the author of “September 11: An Oral History.”

“Dean is a journalist with wide experience, the confidence to apply skepticism to all sides of a story and a sense of fun that goes beyond his giant Halloween pumpkin and ugly Christmas sweater,” said Matt Purdy. “He has guided some of our most thorny and impactful coverage over many years. Dean’s expanded purview in his new job is a boon for our enterprise work of all types.”

Hannah Fairfield is a pioneer at The Times. In 2017, she became our first Climate editor and created a desk that leaned into visual journalism while producing some of our finest enterprise and investigative work. Over eight years, she expanded the team to include more than two dozen journalists, who traveled the world and documented the dramatic impact of climate change.

Hannah’s talent for innovation and visual storytelling has made the Climate desk a cutting-edge laboratory for bold experimentation. In a collaboration with editors on Video, the Climate desk used an infrared video camera to allow readers to see invisible methane leaks at oil and gas sites. To visualize California’s vulnerability to climate change, the desk collaborated with Graphics on 3-D models of megafires and data-animations of megastorms. It has also produced standout coverage like Uncharted Waters, an investigation into the extreme damage to America’s groundwater, as well as the recent exclusive reporting by Hiroko Tabuchi on the dangers that “forever chemicals” pose to our food supply.

Hannah joined The Times in 2000 as a graphics editor and worked on coverage of 9/11 and the Iraq war. She left in 2010 for a stint as graphics director of The Washington Post but soon returned and helped produce an array of signature Times projects. She grew up in Alaska, where her family often traveled the Yukon River region in a bush plane piloted by her father, an Episcopal priest. She has two master’s degrees from Columbia, one in journalism and the other in environmental science, and brings in homemade plum preserves for her team – something we can all now hope for.

“Hannah is an impressive leader who can envision new types of journalism,” said Steve Duenes. “A few of us can recall her tenure at The Washington Post when she made their graphics desk faster, smarter and more competitive with us. We were very happy (and relieved!) to have her back on our side then, and it’s exciting now to see her stretch out across the newsroom.”

Please join me in congratulating Dean and Hannah on their new roles.