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LA_Times_Building
The Los Angeles Times headquarters in El Segundo, Calif. (The Angels 2010 // CC BY-SA 3.0)

1967 Penn Law graduate Norman Pearlstine was named executive editor of the Los Angeles Times on Monday.

Norman Pearlstine

A long-time journalist who had most recently served as vice chairman of Time Inc., Pearlstine grew up in Collegeville, Pa., and attended Haverford College as an undergraduate. After graduating from Penn Law in 1967, Pearlstine worked as a copy boy for the New York Times. Shortly after, he joined the Wall Street Journal, serving as a staff reporter in different American cities in the 1970s.  

In 1978, Pearlstine joined Forbes as executive editor, but returned to the Journal two years later where he started their Asian edition, as well as serving as managing editor and executive editor.

Over the following decades, Pearlstine worked at Smart Money, Bloomberg, and most recently Time, where he retired from in 2017, according to Variety. 

Pearlstine was hired at the Times by billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong, who recently purchased the paper in a $500 million deal.

“Not only does he have amazing experience with the full knowledge of how a newsroom runs — but he’s amazingly modern and forward-looking,” Soon-Shiong told the Times. “There’s no agenda, other than to make this the best journalistic institution. We’re lucky to be able to capture him.”

The 75-year-old Penn Law graduate becomes the Times’ fourth top editor in under a year, and will be tasked with stabilizing the paper after recent turmoil, according to the New York Times.