All,

I am delighted to announce two new managing editors who will be pillars of leadership in our transforming newsroom:

 Maria Douglas Reeve, Assistant Managing Editor/News at the Star Tribune in Minneapolis, will be the Managing Editor/Content.  Mark Lorando, until recently the Editor in Chief of the Times-Picayune in New Orleans, will be the Managing Editor/Audience.

Maria started her career in Bradenton, Fla., as a reporter before moving to the St. Paul Pioneer Press in 1992. She held several positions there, including covering the state legislature and then leading the paper’s coverage of politics and government. In 2011, she moved to the Star Tribune, where she directed features coverage and was deputy Metro editor before taking the AME job early in 2017.

As an editor, she has overseen coverage of many of Minnesota’s most high-profile news events, including a Republican National Convention, a Super Bowl, the aftermath of the shooting of Philando Castile and the election of Rep. Ilhan Omar to Congress.

Maria is an active member of the National Association of Black Journalists, serving as program chair for the 2018 and 2019 record-breaking conventions in Detroit and Miami. She is married to Tad Reeve, sports editor of the Pioneer Press. They have three children.

And she has completed nine marathons, which will give you some idea about her grit and determination.

It will be her mission to push us to continue to develop hard-hitting reporting, but also to assess whether we’re hitting in all the right places. She will work with department heads to examine our beats, and to work closely with them, and with Mark, to make sure that we’re jumping on stories that will help propel us toward our lofty digital subscription goals.

Mark has spent 38 years in journalism, all of it in New Orleans. From 2012 to 2019, he led the digital transformation of the Times-Picayune newsroom, producing dramatic audience growth while adding five Emmys, a Peabody and a Dart Award to the four Pulitzer Prizes the newsroom earned in 2006 and 1997. (Yes, he knows something about covering hurricanes.)

As editor and vice president of content starting in 2015, Mark was responsible for the day-to-day newsgathering and long-term strategic planning of the Times-Picayune and its affiliated website, NOLA.com, the dominant digital news platform in the Gulf South. He began his journalism career in 1981 as an 18-year-old newsroom clerk, working his way up through the ranks to reporter, columnist, features editor, managing editor and editor-in-chief.

After the sale of The Times-Picayune and NOLA.com to The New Orleans Advocate in May, Lorando served as editor-at-large for Advance Local, developing content initiatives for Advance newsrooms across the United States.

He twice served as a Pulitzer Prize juror. He and his wife, Sandra, have three adult children and two grandchildren.

Mark will lead the new audience team, which consists of the digital team and the copy and design desks, now to be known as the multiplatform desk. His leadership will be essential as we continue to refine the relationship between chron.com and houstonchronicle.com, get digital help from the multiplatform desk and work on strategies to help us achieve those previously mentioned digital subscription goals.

Please join me in welcoming both Maria and Mark. And thanks to you all for what you’re doing every day.

Steve

Steve Riley Executive Editor Houston Chronicle Media Group