Sewell Chan

Chan, the son of immigrants from China and Hong Kong, grew up in Flushing, Queens and attended New York City public schools and Hunter College High School.[1] His father was a taxi cab driver. He graduated from Harvard University with an AB in Social Studies in 1998 and received a Marshall Scholarship for graduate study at Oxford University.[2] He received his MPhil in Politics in 2000. He interned for The Philadelphia Inquirer in 1995, The Wall Street Journal in 1996, and The Washington Post in 1997 and 1999.[3]

From 2000 to 2004, Chan wrote for The Washington Post, where he covered municipal politics, poverty and social services, and education. He was the co-author of a four-part investigative series about the treatment of juvenile delinquents in the District of Columbia,[4] and won praise from the Society for American Archivists for his investigation into conditions at the District of Columbia Archives.[5] He also covered the conflict in Iraq for the Post's Baghdad bureau.[6]

After moving to The New York Times in 2004, Chan developed a reputation as a prolific reporter.[7] He reported on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina,[8] the 2005 transit strike,[9] and the 2008 papal visit of Benedict XVI.[10]

From 2007 to 2009, Chan was the founding bureau chief of City Room, the newspaper's local news blog.[11][12] City Room was originally conceptualized as "a vehicle to hone and elevate" Chan's reporting, given that he had become recognized as "a powerhouse in the newsroom."[13] Under Chan, City Room was part of The Times's 2009 Pulitzer Prize-winning breaking news reporting which led Eliot Spitzer to resign as governor of New York.[14]

In January 2010, Chan joined The Times's Washington bureau as a correspondent covering economic policy.[15] In February 2011, Chan was named deputy opinion page editor of The Times.[16]

In June 2015, Chan became The New York Times International News Editor, London, "leading The Times's real-time news operation there."[17] From London, Chan reported on Brexit,[18] terrorist attacks,[19] and the European migrant crisis.[20]

In August 2017, The New York Times announced that Chan had been appointed the newspaper's first "International News Editor," a deputy position joining the missions of the Express and International desks.[21]

In August 2018, the Los Angeles Times named Chan a deputy managing editor. In the role he "will supervise a team of journalists responsible for initiating coverage and developing content for its digital, video and print platforms."[22] In April 2020, he was promoted to editorial page editor, in charge of overseeing the editorial and op-ed pages.[23]

In 2010 Chan was appointed as a member of the National Advisory Board of the Poynter Institute[24] and has been honored with a Rosalynn Carter Fellowship for Mental Health Journalism.[25][26] Chan is also a recipient of the German Marshall Fund of the United States's Marshall Memorial Fellowship.

In 2014, Chan was named to the Out magazine Out100 list of the most compelling lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in the world.[27]

Chan now works as an Editorial Page Editor for the Los Angeles Times.

On November 14, 2020, Chan spearheaded an initiative that turned over the LA Times's editorial page solely to pro-Trump voices. [28] He was criticized immediately by media commentators and experts, who widely noted that he selected unrepresentative views of Trump supporters that were more palatable to the LA Times readership, even though he had not engaged in such an effort for Clinton voters after the 2016 election. They argued that this was a breach of journalistic ethics for misrepresenting Trump voters' views. He angrily demanded that critics, "Read the damn letters."[29]

• New York Times articles by Sewell Chan
• Appearances on C-SPAN