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Aaron Curtiss, the tech editor in the Business section, gets the title of Deputy Innovation Editor at the Times. He was on the Spring Street Project, has experience on the non-editorial side of the paper, and his wife is Jennifer Oldham, the paper's LAX reporter. Memo after the jump.
Also: Nikki Finke now predicts "mass exodus" of Baquet loyalists and names investigations editor Vernon Loeb as one especially likely to leave. Loeb came during the Carroll-Baquet era.
February 1, 2007
To: The Staff
From: Russ Stanton, Innovation Editor
Aaron Curtiss, who has been the Business section's technology editor since 2002, has been named Deputy Innovation Editor.
In his new post, Aaron will be one of two senior-level editors helping all of us figure out how to make The Times' print and online newsrooms one big, seamless journalistic operation. (The other slot has yet to be filled.) He is intimately familiar with the size and scope of this challenge, having been a member of the Spring Street Committee, which quickly shifted its initial mission of trying to improve the paper to upgrading latimes.com.
Under Aaron' s leadership, The Times' technology coverage has stood out in the crowded media landscape by focusing on the cultural changes created by the convergence of entertainment and technology. His enthusiasm for the subject matter, unconventional methods of motivation (assembly of Lego products is required) and can-do attitude make Aaron a real pleasure to work with, and for.
Despite his youthful appearance and demeanor, Aaron is a veritable warhorse of The Times. He joined the paper in 1988 as an intern at age 19, moved into the two-year program in the Valley Edition two years later, and became a full-time staff writer in 1993. He launched the paper's first column about video games in 1995 and served as the Valley Edition's editorial page editor.
Intrigued by the business operations of the paper, Aaron went back to school to get an MBA degree and spent two years as assistant to the vice president of advertising, where he worked on preprints and direct-mail advertising.
We lured him back to the newsroom in 2000 to become editor of Tech Times, a weekly technology section that he launched and ran for two years. He was promoted to assistant technology editor in 2000 and to senior technology editor in 2002.
In addition to the MBA from UCLA, Aaron has a bachelor's degree in journalism from USC and studied American history at UCLA for three years. He also holds a professional certificate in land-use and environmental planning from UC Santa Barbara, which explains why he has the greenest yard on his block.