In Black America; Executive Editor Kevin Merida, Part I

From the University of Texas at Austin, KUT Radio, this is In Black America. In a product of relationship with my really, really good friend, Debra Martinez, who was at the Dallas Morning News at the time. And she and I were classmates at Boston University. We helped to really develop, we're in the early, early pioneers of a Black stew newspaper on campus. And so she was my good close friend and she was down at the Dallas Morning News and just telling me all of what they were doing and building there. And it was a great news paper war between the Dallas Morning News and Dallas Times Heros and they were spending a lot of resources. There was a special project team and I started having conversations. So she was recruiting me informally and I started having conversations and ended up coming there by mom off of me and John.

Kevin Meredith executive editor of the Los Angeles Times. In June 2021, Meredith took the hammer of the largest news gathering organization in the West. The veteran journalists became the 19th editor of the 139-year-old news paper. Previously with a senior vice president at ESPN, the origin chief of the undefeated, a multimedia platform that explored the intersections of race, sports and culture. Before ESPN, he spent two decades at the Washington Post. Prior to the post, he worked at the Dallas Morning News at the Special Projects reporter, local political writer and national correspondent based in Washington DC. In 2020, he received a National Association of Black Journalists Checkstone Lifetime Achievement Award. Over the years, Meredith has proven he can flourish in the industry that has a small number of media executives that look like him. I'm Johnny Ohanson Jr. and welcome to another edition of In Black America.

On this week's program, Kevin Meredith, executive editor of the Los Angeles Times, In Black America. Journalism gives us a great opportunity to learn constantly. And for me, these years, the years I spent at ESPN and after Walt Disney Company, was really a great growth period for me professionally and just knowledge-wise. And, you know, because I'm doing things, thinking about marketing, thinking about documentaries, you know, all kinds of other things that I had not done. Really more connected with advertising and revenue and monetization, you know, you're getting the full spectrum of what it would be to be a media executive. The small team, too, and a relatively small budget also taught you that you can do some tremendous work with relatively small group and a relatively small budget. And it's a lesson that, you know, try to carry it back here. Kevin Meredith is no stranger to big-time opportunities. He has navigated the media minefield to achieve one of the most prestigious positions within the Forfeux State, that of executive editor of the Los Angeles Times.

Born in Wichita, Kansas, he was raised in Washington, D.C. Meredith is the graduate of Boston University in the summer program for military journalists at UC Berkeley. In 1979, he began his journal of career at the Milwaukee Journal as a general assignment reported. In 1983, Dallas Morning News came calling. There, he was a special project reporter and a political writer, who later became the paper's national correspondent based in Washington, D.C. In 1993, the Washington Post hired him. He spent the next two decades with them in a variety of roles, most notable, that of managing editor. Then in November of 2015, ESPN tapped him to launch the undefeated, a major undertaking that explored the intersections of race, sports, and culture. If he thought he was done, think again. In 2021, he was presenting an offer he could refuse. After a six-month search, the Los Angeles Times named him the executive editor.

Racine Black America spoke with Kevin Meredith. Hey, John, it's always great to be with you, man. You know, we go back a long time, so I appreciate all the good work you've done, man, and what you've done to lift up our profession. I appreciate it. We know each other when we had hair. That's what I... I know, and I got to get a haircut tomorrow. I heard that. Born in a Wichita, but raised in D.C., talk to us about growing up in the nation's capital. You know, it was a great experience for me. I think the D.C. area, we call it the DMV, and that based on automobile agency. But D.C., Maryland, Virginia, you know, it's great just because there's two different kinds of D.C.s. And you know, there's certainly the part that the people live in, and then there's the official Washington, right?

And I think official Washington is what everybody knows. And that helps to fuel your interest in journalism. I mean, I think being... I happen to be growing up where the Washington Post is my local paper. And I learned a lot by reading it, you know, as a kid. You know, particularly in sports pages, great columnist, Shirley Polvich, and it's how it was my introduction to journalism. I also happen to go grew up in the era around Watergate, and to tremendous investigative journalism. Of course, we know Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, and the Washington Post essentially caused the resignation of a president. And that had a lot of impact on me, and thinking about the power of what journalism can do. And so it was a great time growing up there, and certainly I enjoyed a lot of those that are just... For those who don't know D.C. the city, you know, go-go music is the indigenous music there. It's the sounds of D.C., go-go bands, Chuck Brown and the Soul Search as I grew up with go-go.

Also, a big influence on my early life. Were you participating in your high school newspaper, the cross on high school newspaper? I did, you know. I was in the first class of busing and press George's County. And that was a really important experience for me, because it was where I met Linda Warner, who was a teacher, English teacher, and also the supervisor of the school newspaper. She continued to press me to participate in it, which was very difficult for all of us who were bus, because it was lengthen our days, and those would be like 12 hour work days. If we did that, and I played basketball, so anything that what you were saying after school to do was really meant that you were maybe getting home with 7 o'clock at night. So, it was very difficult, but she prevailed, and she pushed me, encouraged me, and I give her a lot of credit. That's where my first actual experience was, and really thinking about journalism.

So, yeah, I did. I worked on the school newspaper, and I ended up going to Boston University to pursue a career in journalism. Was Boston University you wanted only offer, or you had other interests in other universities? Well, I visited Ohio University, and unfortunately now they have the great scripts program there. I fell in love with Boston University, because it was in the city, and it was, it's almost like just like in why you or other urban places that had a vibrancy to it. And there was campus life, and brown stones, and all of that, but there was, it was right on a trolley line, and so that really appealed to me. You know, I didn't get into all the schools I applied to. I applied to some big journalism schools, and I'm just going to call them out, like Missouri, and you know, I'm pretty sure applied to Missouri Syracuse and big schools. I didn't get into all of them, and so Howard was another one that I considered, you know, had a really strong communications program, and my father unfortunately died unexpectedly my high school senior year, and almost didn't go to Boston University, because of that I almost just thought it was better to stay home, but it was really my mother who encouraged me to go away to school.

I was prepared to go to Howard, I did get accepted in the Howard, and it was really a tremendous school, but she thought it would be really advantageous for me to, to leave home and, and get out and see some other parts of another part of the country, and I did that. I also understand you attended the University of California Berkeley summit program, was that in your junior year? No, that was after, I graduated, it was a grad program, you got graduate credits, but it was really back in the day, the first program of the Maynard Institute for Journalist Meditation, which now of course has went on to have editing programs, the management programs has really been instrumental in shaping our industry around diversity, equity, inclusion, but, but help to really diversify this industry. And, and push for it and been responsible for training a lot of journalism color, but they had a summer program is really an historic summer program was like a summer boot camp and 10 weeks being in Berkeley, we put out a weekly newspaper, and we got taught by some of the best because journalists would, would fly in from other places some of the best around the country and, and spend anywhere from a week to five or six weeks teaching in this program.

And, and giving us the benefit of their actual hands on guidance, and it was a phenomenal program is, it was, it was where I really got to forge a bond with, with the late less pain, who was certainly one of my early mentors, and, and got a chance to work with him on investigative reporting and, and really helped to shake how I thought about our craft. And so, and some of my really great mentors, including Nancy Hicks, Nancy Hicks, Maynard, and, and certainly her husband Bob Maynard and many others. Eventually you found your way to the Milwaukee Journal, how did you get there coming out of the summer program.

That was the job offer that we were able, I was able to get out of this program, and that was my first introduction, you know, working in professional newsroom in the middle of the country, but it was a great experience, foundational for me, really helped to shake. I pursued reporting, and it was really an interesting investigative reporting early on, so I worked a lot of off hours after my regular duties to try to invest, to do some investigations and, and make my mark there, and, and with successful and, and, and a couple of big stories, including investigating organized dog fighting and, and investigating a, a drug ring. It was operating in Milwaukee, so it was really just a tremendous early grounding in journalism, and it, and it remains a tremendous paper. It was two papers back there, it was an afternoon paper in Milwaukee Journal, but now, and the Sentinel was a morning paper, but now the journal sent those one paper still a tremendous news paper in this country. Now, when we first met in 1983, the Dallas Morning News came calling, what did that feel like?

Man, you got to, you got to drop that on, you got to drop that in there, John, you know, when we met and stuff, man, you got to drop that date back. But yeah, it was getting a product of relationship with my really, really good friend, Deborah Martin, who was at the Dallas Morning News at the time. And she and I were classmates of Boston University, we, we helped to really develop in the early early pioneers of a, of a black student newspaper on campus. And so she was my good close friend, and she was down at the Dallas Morning News, and, and just telling me all of the, all of what they were doing and building there and. It was a great news paper war between the Dallas Morning News and Dallas Times Herald, and they were spending a lot of resources. There was a special project team, and I started having conversations. So she was recruiting me informally, and I started having conversations and ended up coming there and Bob Wong, offering me a job. Now, you were doing local politics and Dallas and then obviously you got a call to go back home, what did that feel like?

Well, I was doing local politics, and then, you know, a lot was happening. I was, you know, a politics is really important to me. I learned under the great Sam Adlesy, the late great Sam Adlesy at the Dallas Morning News, and. But I always wanted to like a lot of people continue to want to cover national politics. And I got a chance to go to the Washington Bureau of the Dallas Morning News credit to Carl Luke store for that. And I went and ended up being a national correspondent in DC and ended up working, you know, covering the campaigns, particularly the 88 campaign of Michael the caucus and then came back after that to cover the White House of George HW Bush, the president. And so there's also really tremendous experience in the Washington Bureau and getting much more interconnected with national politics. And then the polls came called.

Well, there's one step before that, which is I left the Washington Bureau because they were having some, you know, the Dallas Morning News leadership, Ralph Langer, Bob Wong, and they wanted to diversify their. Management ranks and so they had some shake up of the, the math dead and, and they asked me to come back to oversee foreign and national news coverage. And, and, and to be an assistant managing editor. And so I ended up doing that for a couple of years before the post called, you know, the, and it was not the first time. That the post had called. I thought maybe I had missed my window of coming to the Washington Post, to be honest. I thought, you know, I had turned them down. He's a couple of different times. And I thought, man, I'm never going to, you know, they're going to say forget him. But I had a really personal reason to, to get back to, to DC because I had a close relationship with my now wife and we had a long distance relationship.

And, and so we ended up, you know, I ended up getting coming back, talking to the post. By this time, I had a pretty good relationship with the management there and was pretty well known. And so we're just so happy as job covering Congress open. And I went back and talked to them and, and ended up getting hired onto the national staff as a congressional reporter and starting first day Bill Clinton was inaugurated president. You understand? If you're just joining us, I'm Johnny Johansson, Jr. And you're listening to in black America from KUT Radio, when we speak with Kevin Meredith, executive editor with the Los Angeles Times. Kevin, a lot of journalists want to stay just being journalists, but obviously you have your sites set on bigger things. Why consideration and, and becoming manager. Well, I mean, I think it's always important for us to get into management and diversify the ranks and certainly important for black journalists to, to think about that.

I, I was reluctant, I'll admit, you know, I, I think I always felt that I had leadership ability. And the thing I say about leaders is that you can lead anywhere, right? You can lead from where you are. You know, you can, you can, and even before I was in management, yeah, I was always part of bringing people together to talk to leaders, either individually to talk about how to diversify our newsrooms and, and improvements in them. So, I think it's possible to play a role. I was, I loved to write and report so much so I was reluctant. And I, every time I put my foot in, I had this itch to get out, you know, to go back into writing. So, you know, I kept doing that, putting my foot in here. And, and then it came that, you know, we had a new editor, Marcus Browkeley from the Wall Street Journal, who took over right at the end of the 2008 campaign. And, and, you know, which I was covering is kind of a roving feature writer.

And I was thinking like, man, after this, I'm going to try to carve out a space to really write about the first African American president. But they, he asked me to be national letter. And this time I really looked at it really closely. A lot of people prevailed on me, some of my mentors and others said, look, you know, you know, your, your place needs you is giving you a lot. And, and I thought at that time I would have been, I was the first, first African American editor to be national letter. And so, I did that. And that kind of set a path of, you know, just continue being a management, you know, I'm talking to you, you know, is that going to better? It started really with that. It was a continuing, you know, through four years of national letter. And then almost three years of being managing editor, Marty Baron came in and then, you know, my decision to leave. And, and go to ESPN.

To, to launch a startup called the undefeated now landscape. And, and from there deciding to leave the Walt Disney company after five years there. And, you know, as a senior vice president that are in chief, the undefeated and, and, and join the L.A. Times. And that was largely through really, you know, I would say that the soon show family, particularly Patrick and Michelle and daughter. Nikon talking to them about what all they were trying to do with the Los Angeles Times and in my sense of their commitment to it and to the city. And here I am talking to you. About that day when you went to you ESPN because, you know, I woke up, you know, 2015 and you're leaving the post. And I'm saying you're going to stop this upstart the undefeated that's going to blaze new trails with racing culture through sports. Talk to us about that. It was really an agonizing decision for me because, you know, I've been at the Washington Post for 22 years and done a lot of different things and also being managing editor. I really love working with Marty Baron.

Really great experience and we still remain close. And I just felt like I felt really connected to the newsroom there. And, you know, sometimes when you're just at a place that feels home, it's hard to leave it, you know, particularly when you're, you're usually in the position. I'm on the other side and I'm trying to get people to stay with us and not leave. So now, now people try to get me to not leave, but, but sometimes I think we were kind of in this era. It was in the early stages of really digital transformation, you know, that had been happening. Certainly in happening at the Washington Post happening in elsewhere. But, you know, I think slowly, methodically. Part of it happening was it was getting all of us to think differently about our careers and about. And there was something about the chance to launch a startup.

That was part of it that that ESPN couldn't get off the ground. It was a new challenge. So it's a little bit like disrupting myself. We were in the age of disruption. And I thought I could just mind as well maybe take a flyer and disrupt myself and try something different. It also was a reminder to me. This was the modern version of what we started a black student newspaper on campus. It falls university in a white, a lonely white campus. And this is the modern version of it, you know, to start something from scratch, build it, see what we could do with it. And just the challenge of it. And so I didn't regret that at all. Like it was because I learned so much, you know, learned a lot about linear television. I never work in television, learned a lot. And I certainly just about how the ecosystem of media is all kind of intertwined and connected. And we did so many different things, you know, we really were, we used to say this, you know, Rain and Kelly took over for me to say we were going to be content agnostic and we were, I mean, we did a couple of best selling children's books and we did tell halls we bought Barack Obama to the largest HBCU for televised special, you know, we had a televised special on gun violence in Chicago.

We did things that really nobody had done before we got there at ESPN, you know, we really pioneered a lot there. And I think in the country, we did music videos and original music. And then we just started finally able to break through right after George Floyd killed, unfortunately, you know, we were pushing to grow across the Walt Disney company was. It was really that time around the time to allow this spotlight more broadly with the company and we were able to do some of the things that we wanted to do, including a record label, book imprint. And now it independent studio and that's all happened and and I feel proud that we we expanded and in a clearly on your way of building kind of a global black frame within the Walt Disney company.

And so all of it is beyond just like individual success is personal and personal satisfaction. It's just learning. And I think we're all trying to do that as as journalists journalism gives us a great opportunity to learn constantly. And for me, these years, the years I spent at ESPN and at the Walt Disney company, was really a great growth period for me professionally and just knowledge wise. And you know, because I'm doing things and thinking about marketing, thinking about documentaries, you know, all kinds of other things that I had not done. Really more connected with advertising and revenue and monetization, you know, you're getting the full spectrum of what it would be to be a media executive and with a small team too. And a relatively small budget also taught you that you can do some tremendous work with relatively small group and a relatively small budget.

And it's a lesson that, you know, try to carry it back here. It's been a year since your appointment. What was it about the Los Angeles time that that struck your interest considering that it had its own problems itself? Well, again, I was struck by, you know, it was a really active courtship on the part of Patrick and Michelle Sunchang. And I was drawn to some of the ideas that in the vibrancy that their daughter, Nika had in their commitment to the place. You know, it's, you know, a lot of people have bought newspapers and destroyed them, right? And, you know, certainly, you know, there have been, I say, all billionaires not created equal, you know, there, there have been, but I think they, they really saw the potential of what the L.A. Times can become, you know, this predates me. It was bought by Patrick before I got there and he invested in it and he's shown the commitment to it.

And so I think, you know, my idea of creating a modern media company and really redefining what, what the modern newspaper is, what is, is with something that I think he also understood and, and I think we, we hit it off and that we had similar goals and aspirations. So again, it was the challenge too, you know, I mean, I've been, you know, went to the undefeated and people had really written it off or dead. And, you know, we built it and made it into something really. I think that people could be proud of and I thought that we got a big challenge here where we don't have as much penetration as we, we should have and we deserve to have it. You know, L.A. has been through a lot of difficult days before. So we, so we have an opportunity and we have to build, build the, the place and get audience and, and, and build subscription. So part of it was the challenge of doing it and the quality was always there, journalistically, no one needed to tell me about the high quality.

I was a consumer of the L.A. times over the years and, and even in the most difficult periods of producing some tremendous journalism. So knew a lot of the journalists and familiar with the reputations of others I didn't know. And so I think, yeah, just say, let me, let me try something. And, and obviously the chance to be being the West Coast with my kids, you know, my, our two older sons been out here in the film business and the oldest son has a grandson so the opportunity to bring our media family together was also peeling to me and my wife and here we are. What will be some of your top priorities and how will you go about achieving those goals? Well, one of the biggest priorities was just to, and this is a glamorous is to structure us to really have structure and practices that represent the era we're living in now and how people are consuming. So, you know, to be more active and vibrant on social media, we created a social team.

Kevin Merida, Executive Editor of the L.A. times, we will conclude our conversation on next week's program. If you have questions, comments, or suggestions as to future in black America program, email us at in black America at kut.org. Also, let us know what radio states you heard us over. Don't forget to subscribe to our podcast and follow us on Facebook and Twitter. You can get previous programs online at kut.org. Also, you can listen to a special collection of them black America programs at American Archives of Public Broadcasting. That's American Archives.org. The views and opinions expressed on this program are not necessary. The views of this station, or of the University of Texas at Austin, until we have the opportunity again for Technical Reduces David Alvarez. I'm John E. Hanson Jr. Thank you for joining us today. Please join us again next week. CD copies of this program are available and may be purchased by writing in black America CDs, KUT Radio, 300 West Dean Keaton Boulevard, Austin, Texas, 78712.

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