Quick media hire of note

Sara Catania, the talented L.A. journalist who conceived and wrote our Run On blog about preparing to compete in the 2009 Los Angeles Marathon, is the new Web Editorial Director at KNBC Channel 4. (Those are her feet.) She had been an editor at AOL Patch. KNBC's announcement is after the jump.

Please welcome Sara Catania as our new Web Editorial Director. Sara is an award-winning journalist who comes to KNBC with more than 20 years of media experience. Sara joins us from patch.com, AOL'...s hyperlocal news operation, where she was one of the first regional editors nationwide and the first in Southern California. In 2010 Sara was a key player in the very ambitious task of conceiving and building a network of more than 70 sites from Ventura to San Diego counties with direct responsibility for sites in the South Bay, the San Fernando Vally and West LA. Sara's previous experience includes stints as a reporter at the Los Angeles Times and the LA Daily News, and as a staff writer for the LA Weekly.

Sara is a contributing editor for the Los Angeles Times op-ed page and an adjunct journalism professor at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism. Her work has appeared in (and on) numerous publications and websites including Mother Jones, the Huffington Post, California, Asian Week, LA Observed and the Los Angeles Times Magazine. Sara has a Masters of Journalism from UC Berkeley and Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from St. Johns College. Sara is the recipient of a John S. Knight Journalism Fellowship at Stanford University and a Katrina Media Fellowship with the Open Society Institute.

We are excited about Sara's combined excellence in journalism and experience in the emerging media landscape, and look for her to be the ideal leader to partner with the various components of the NBC LA team and the larger Local Media community. Sara will report directly to me locally, and to Greg Gittrich, VP Digital Media & Editor in Chief at the division level.