Welcome to 2022.

COVID's still worldwide thing.

Midterm elections in the U.S. will be huge and climate change don't stop.

That's why now, more than ever, you need a great news outlet to make sense of it all.

You need the Los Angeles Times.

So what are we going to do this year to tackle all the Desmadre?

Beats me, but I know someone to ask. I'm Gustavo

Riano. You're listening to The Times, Daily News from the LA Times. It's Monday, January 3rd,

2022. Happy New Year to y'all. Today we're spending the entire episode with LA Times executive

editor Kevin Merida. He's about six months into the job, so it's naturally time for an evaluation.

We're going to ask him what he's learned, what he wants the LA Times to do in this new year,

and hopefully he'll give a shout out to how awesome this podcast is, am I right? So when it was announced that Kevin was going to be the LA Times as Hefe de Hefe, the boss of bosses, the entire newsroom was excited, but cautious.

Nothing against Kevin, of course.

He came with an impeccable resume, Washington Post, ESPN, the undefeated, this great website

about the intersections of culture, sports, and politics. But when Kevin came in, the LA Times

was emerging from a long season of her. The pandemic had gutted our revenue, newspaper scandals had hurt morale.

A bunch of our past previous executive editors were, to put it bluntly, problematic. And now we

have Kevin joining us. Hefe, welcome to the Times. Thank you. I'm, uh, I feel welcome.

Good, good, good. So you've spent your entire career before getting to the Times

based everywhere but the West, Milwaukee, Dallas, D.C., and you had a good gig being the boss

of the undefeated. So what was it about joining the LA Times that excited you?

Man, I heard about you, man. And that's a big factor. I felt like it was, it would be exciting. I think when you've done a lot of

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