Follow LA Observed on Twitter here
Doug Frantz has been named the Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs at the Department of State. It's his second time working for John Kerry: Frantz had previous been an investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Frantz most recently left as national security editor for the Washington Post.
Frantz was the Los Angeles Times managing editor who served as the top deputy when Dean Baquet was the paper's editor. Frantz resigned in 2007, about seven months after Baquet was pressured to leave in a dispute with Tribune over layoffs and budget cuts. This was just weeks after Frantz's own public dust-up with staff writer Mark Arax over the handling of a story on Turkey's genocide of Armenians. Frantz had spent considerable time living in Turkey as a foreign correspondent, and he returned to Istanbul after leaving the LAT. Frantz was a prolific investigative reporter and author before going into editing.
Here's how the White House sums up his career so far:
Douglas Frantz, Appointee for Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs, Department of State
Douglas Frantz served as the National Security Editor for the Washington Post from 2012 to 2013. He was a Managing Director at Kroll Advisory Solutions from 2011 to 2012. From 2009 to 2011, he served as Deputy Staff Director and Chief Investigator for the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He was Senior Writer at Conde Nast Portfolio from 2007 to 2009. From 2003 to 2007, he worked at the LA Times as an investigative reporter before becoming managing editor in charge of news content in 2005. Mr. Frantz worked at the New York Times as a business reporter, investigative reporter, foreign correspondent, and investigations editor from 1994 to 2003. He was a business reporter at the LA Times, and then an investigative reporter in the Washington Bureau from 1987 to 1994. Mr. Frantz was an investigative reporter for the Chicago Tribune both in Chicago and Washington from 1978 to 1987. He is the author and co-author of non-fiction books covering topics such as nuclear proliferation, urban planning, and bank fraud. Mr. Frantz was a Pulitzer Prize finalist twice and was a member of the New York Times team that received the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 2002 for coverage of the aftermath of 9/11. He received a B.A. from DePauw University and an M.A. from Columbia University School of Journalism.
If you have forgotten what 2006 was like around the Los Angeles Times, here's a reminder. If that whole messy era is new to you, you may not believe just how tumultuous things were around the Times in those days. It got more so in 2007. Baquet, by the way, is now the managing editor at the New York Times.
