Los Angeles Times Names Laura Wides-Muñoz New Deputy Editor for Washington

Sent from Kimbriell Kelly, Washington Bureau Chief:

Dear Colleagues,

I’m excited to announce that Laura Wides-Muñoz, currently the executive editor for news practices at ABC News in Washington, D.C., will be joining The Times next month as the deputy editor for the Washington bureau.

Wides-Muñoz has played a major role in ABC’s most ambitious work, overseeing news practices for the network’s recent investigation into allegations of racial inequities in NFL concussion payouts, as well as its coverage of the Mueller investigation, the impeachment of President Donald Trump and the contentious 2020 election.

Prior to joining ABC, Wides-Muñoz was the vice president of special projects and editorial strategy at Fusion Network in Miami, a startup focused on millennials, where she served as a senior story editor for the documentary “Death by Delivery,” on the disparities in maternal mortality; “Debt Trap,” a deep dive into the student loan business; and “Wasteland,” an award-winning feature on Oklahoma’s environmental crisis.

Prior to joining the editing ranks, Wides-Muñoz was a pioneering reporter in Los Angeles and Miami, where she established AP’s first national beat on the growing Latino communities in the U.S., and later launched the wire service’s first national network of immigration reporters.

In addition to her management experience and expertise in national politics and policy, Wides-Muñoz has spent a considerable amount of time in both Washington and Los Angeles. She grew up on Capitol Hill, and she and her family currently reside in the District. She began her domestic reporting career working at the Los Angeles Times. Wides-Muñoz documented how former bracero workers sought lost wages and wrote about California’s near-shore oil drilling, while also covering cops and courts. Prior to her first stint with The Times, Wides-Muñoz spent three years in Guatemala reporting on the end of the nation’s civil war.

Wides-Muñoz later worked as an environmental and diversity reporter in the AP’s Los Angeles office covering the western water wars, environmental justice and the creation of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and its pilot program to track down “fugitive immigrants.” She also covered the 2004 presidential campaigns and interviewed such current California and national political leaders as Eric Garcetti, Xavier Becerra and Alejandro Mayorkas.

In 2018, she published “The Making of a Dream,” which follows the nation’s immigrant youth movement and the origins of the Dream Act. The book was a semifinalist for the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction.

A Gwen Ifill Mentor for the International Women’s Media Foundation, Wides-Muñoz majored in environmental studies at Brown University and was a 2013 Nieman fellow at Harvard University. She is fluent in Spanish and holds a black belt in hapkido.

Please join me in welcoming Wides-Muñoz, who will join The Times on March 8.