27 Facts About Dean Baquet

Dean Baquet served as the executive editor of The New York Times from May 2014 to June 2022.

Between 2011 and 2014 Baquet was managing editor under the previous executive editor Jill Abramson.

Dean Baquet is the first Black person to be executive editor.

Dean Baquet later joined The New York Times and in 1995 became National editor, after having served as deputy Metro editor.

Dean Baquet returned to The New York Times in 2007, after he refused to implement management-desired budget cuts at the Los Angeles paper.

In 1988, Dean Baquet shared a Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Journalism, leading a team of reporters that included William Gaines and Ann Marie Lipinski at the Chicago Tribune, for "their detailed reporting on the self-interest and waste" that plagued the Chicago City Council.

Dean Baquet was raised Catholic in Treme, a working-class African-American neighborhood in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Dean Baquet is the fourth of five sons of New Orleans restaurateur Edward Baquet.

Dean Baquet received a scholarship to study English at Columbia University, but dropped out shortly before graduation to pursue a career in journalism.

Dean Baquet worked in New Orleans for almost a decade, before leaving for the Chicago Tribune.

Dean Baquet began his journalism career at the New Orleans States-Item, which later merged with The Times-Picayune.

Dean Baquet became the top editor in 2005 after Carroll resigned amid clashes with the Tribune Company, which had acquired the Los Angeles Times from the Chandler family in 2000.

Dean Baquet was the first Black person to serve as the newspaper's top editor.

Dean Baquet was fired in 2006 after he publicly opposed plans to cut newsroom jobs.

Two months later, Dean Baquet rejoined The New York Times as the Washington bureau chief.

Dean Baquet became managing editor in September 2011, serving under executive editor Jill Abramson, and was promoted to executive editor on May 14,2014.

Dean Baquet has made hiring reporters and editors of color a priority, saying that his efforts to diversify the newsroom have been "intense and persistent".

Dean Baquet stated that they have plans for Baquet to lead a new venture and will still remain at the paper, without giving further details.

Dean Baquet was a finalist for the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting, for stories that exposed "fraud and mismanagement" at the largest US non-profit health insurer.

Dean Baquet confirmed that he had spoken with Negroponte and Hayden, but said that "government pressure played no role in my decision not to run the story," and that he and Frantz had determined that "we did not have a story, that we could not figure out what was going on" based on highly technical documents submitted by a whistleblower.

Dean Baquet later characterized an article in which the New York Times public editor questioned whether the Times prior coverage of President Trump's possible Russia ties had been unnecessarily and overly cautious as a "bad column" that comes to a "fairly ridiculous conclusion".

Dean Baquet called it a "bad headline" but defended the Times' coverage of Trump.

In 1988, Dean Baquet earned the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting for coverage of corruption in the Chicago City Council, as well as the Peter Lisagor Award for investigative reporting.

Dean Baquet received the Chicago Tribune William H Jones Award for Investigative Reporting in 1987,1988, and 1989.

Dean Baquet received an honorary degree from Loyola University New Orleans in 2013, was a guest speaker at Columbia College Class Day in 2016, and received the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press Freedom of the Press Award in 2018.

In 2019, Baquet received the Larry Foster Award for Integrity in Public Communication at the Arthur W Page Center Awards, the Norman C Francis Leadership Institute National Leadership Award for Excellence, and was named one of the "35 most powerful people in New York media" by The Hollywood Reporter.

Dean Baquet received an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Xavier University of Louisiana in 2020.