Kimi Yoshino, managing editor of the Los Angeles Times, is leaving the newspaper to become editor in chief of the digital Baltimore Banner.
The L-A Times reports Yoshino, 49, has been managing editor of The Times since April 2020, serving as the second in command of the newsroom alongside Scott Kraft and Shani Hilton. Together, Yoshino and Kraft, as co-managing editors, led The Times through the first half of 2021 while the search for the paper’s new executive editor, Kevin Merida, was underway.
“I’ve learned and grown and had a lot of opportunities here at the L.A. Times,” Yoshino said, “but this opportunity in Baltimore is something I couldn’t turn down.”
Bainum founded the Banner after a failed attempt this year to buy the Baltimore Sun for $65 million from Alden Global Capital, the hedge fund that has become one of the largest news companies in the nation after its takeover of Sun owner Tribune Publishing. Bainum has pledged $15 million as a budget for its first year and created an umbrella organization, the Venetoulis Institute for Local Journalism, to house the project. Yoshino is the Banner’s first editorial hire.
“I’ve seen firsthand what it’s like to work for bad ownership — it’s bad for a community,” Yoshino said. “What Alden is doing to newspapers it now owns is heartbreaking, and it’s unconscionable.
Yoshino joined The Times in 2000 as a metro reporter for the Orange County bureau, following stints at the Fresno Bee and Stockton Record. On her first day at the paper, she was assigned to cover the story of Brandon Zucker, a 4-year-old crushed under a ride at Disneyland, and spent her inaugural year chasing the story of Disney’s accountability for dangerous accidents.
Yoshino’s new digital-only project is part of a recent wave of nonprofit newsrooms that have proliferated in recent years, as foundations and wealthy individuals try to fill the gap in local news coverage left by newspapers stripped to skeleton staffs by budget cuts and corporate mismanagement.
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