Dean P. Baquet[1] (/bæˈkeɪ/;[2] born September 21, 1956[3]) is an American journalist. He served as executive editor ofThe New York Times from May 2014 to June 2022.[4] Between 2011 and 2014 Baquet was managing editor under the previous executive editorJill Abramson.[5] He is the first Black person to have led the newsroom.[1]
A native ofNew Orleans, Baquet began his career in journalism there in the 1970s before moving to theChicago Tribune in the 1980s. He joinedThe New York Times metro desk in 1990 and in 1995 became that paper's national editor,[6] after having served as deputy metro editor. In 2000, he left to become managing editor, and later executive editor of theLos Angeles Times. He returned toThe New York Times as Washington bureau chief in 2007, after he refused to implement management-desired newsroom budget cuts at the Los Angeles paper.
Baquet was raisedCatholic inTremé, a working-class Creole neighborhood inNew Orleans, Louisiana.[8] He is the fourth of five sons of New Orleans restaurateurEdward Baquet.[9]
Baquet began his journalism career at theNew Orleans States-Item, which later merged withThe Times-Picayune.[17][18] After six years at theTimes-Picayune, he joined theChicago Tribune in 1984, where he won thePulitzer Prize, before joiningThe New York Times in April 1990 as an investigative reporter on the Metro desk. In May 1992, he became the special projects editor for the business desk. In January 1994, he held the same title, but he operated out of the executive editor's office. In 1996, he became national editor.[19]
In 2000, he joined theLos Angeles Times as managing editor, working as editorJohn Carroll's "right-hand man". Baquet became the top editor in 2005 after Carroll resigned amid clashes with theTribune Company, which had acquired theLos Angeles Times from the Chandler family in 2000.[19][20] He was the first Black person to serve as the newspaper's top editor.[21] Baquet was fired in 2006 after he publicly opposed plans to cut newsroom jobs.[22]
Two months later, Baquet rejoinedThe New York Times as theWashington bureau chief.[23] He became managing editor in September 2011,[24] serving under executive editorJill Abramson,[25] and was promoted to executive editor on May 14, 2014.[19][26][27] Baquet has made hiring reporters and editors of color a priority, saying that his efforts to diversify the newsroom have been "intense and persistent".[28][29]
Baquet, whom U.S. PresidentDonald Trump has attacked by name,[30] has spoken out against Trump's anti-press rhetoric, tellingThe Guardian, "I think personal attacks on journalists, when he calls them names, I think he puts their lives at risk."[31] Baquet was formerly on the board of directors of theCommittee to Protect Journalists.[32] In April 2022,The New York Times announced that Baquet would no longer be executive editor, and will be succeeded byJoseph Kahn. The company stated that it had plans for Baquet to lead a new venture and that he would remain at the paper,[33] later announcing he would lead a fellowship program to train young journalists in local investigative journalism.[34]
Baquet was awarded thePulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting in 1988, in recognition of a six-month investigation that he conducted alongsideChicago Tribune reporters William C. Gaines and Ann Marie Lipinski documenting corruption andinfluence-peddling in the Chicago City Council in a seven-part series. Baquet was also a finalist for the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting, for stories that exposed "fraud and mismanagement" at the largest U.S. non-profit health insurer.[35][7]
Between 1990 and 1995 he reported on different cases of corruption and money laundering.[36]
As managing editor at theLos Angeles Times, Baquet was involved in the newspaper's decision to publish, a few days before the2003 California recall election, an article containing "a half-dozen credible allegations by women in the movie industry" thatArnold Schwarzenegger, a front-runner in the election, had sexually harassed them.[37] The newspaper debated whether to withhold publication until after the election, ultimately deciding not to do so.[37][38] In 2006,Brian Ross and Vic Walter ofABC News reported that Baquet andLos Angeles Times managing editorDouglas Frantz had made the decision to kill a plannedTimes story aboutNSA warrantless surveillance of Americans, acceding to a request made to them by theDirector of National IntelligenceJohn Negroponte andDirector of the NSAMichael Hayden.[39] Baquet confirmed that he had spoken with Negroponte and Hayden, but said that "government pressure played no role in my decision not to run the story", and that he and Frantz had determined that "we did not have a story, that we could not figure out what was going on" based on highly technical documents submitted by a whistleblower.[39] Baquet's decision was criticized byGlenn Greenwald, who said that Baquet had "a really disturbing history of practicing this form of journalism that is incredibly subservient to the American national security state."[40]
I think that the New York-based and Washington-based ... media powerhouses don't quite get religion. We have a fabulous religion writer, but she's all alone. We don't get religion. We don't get the role of religion in people's lives. And I think we can do much, much better. And I think there are things that we can be more creative about to understand the country.[41]
Baquet later characterized an article in whichTheNew York Times' public editor[42] questioned whether theTimes' prior coverage of President Trump's possibleRussia ties had been unnecessarily and overly cautious[43] as a "bad column" that comes to a "fairly ridiculous conclusion".[44] In an interview after the Mueller report came in, Baquet said: "We wrote a lot about Russia, and I have no regrets. It’s not our job to determine whether or not there was illegality."[45]
In 2019,The New York Times published the headline "Trump Urges Unity Vs. Racism", referring to Trump's speech on the2019 El Paso shooting and the2019 Dayton shooting. Baquet called it a "bad headline" but defended theTimes' coverage of Trump.[46] The next month,The New York Times published personal details about the whistleblower at the center of theimpeachment inquiry against Donald Trump, a decision which Baquet defended.[47]
In 2019, Baquet received the Larry Foster Award for Integrity in Public Communication at the Arthur W. Page Center Awards,[58] the Norman C. Francis Leadership Institute National Leadership Award for Excellence,[59] and was named one of the "35 most powerful people in New York media" byThe Hollywood Reporter.[60] He received an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters fromXavier University of Louisiana in 2020.[61]
^abSmith, Jessie Carney, ed. (2012)."2005".Black Firsts: 4,000 Ground-Breaking and Pioneering Historical Events (3 ed.). Visible Ink Press.ISBN978-1578593699.The first black journalist to lead a top newspaper in the United States was Dean P. Baquet...
^abMichael Schudson, "The Multiple Political Roles of American Journalism" inMedia Nation: The Political History of News in Modern America (eds. Bruce J. Schulman & Julian E. Zelizer) (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017), pp. 196-97.
Previously the Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting, No Edition Time from 1953–1963 and the Pulitzer Prize for Local Investigative Specialized Reporting from 1964–1984
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