A memo to the newsroom from Times Editor Davan Maharaj and Managing Editor Marc Duvoisin:

We're pleased to announce that Kimi Yoshino is the new Business editor of the Los Angeles Times.

Kimi brings many valuable qualities to this important job: a passion for news, a commitment to digital journalism, a background in business reporting and a collaborative spirit.

For the past few years, Kimi has been the morning assigning editor in Metro and a driving force behind L.A. Now, our most-read blog. During her tenure, L.A. Now established itself as the go-to source for reliable, real-time coverage of...

Announcing a promotion and two recent additions to The Times' staff:

Stacey Leasca

Stacey Leasca has been named social media editor.

Stacey will work with Jimmy Orr to direct our social media strategy across the newsroom. She and her team will work with writers and editors in all sections to enhance the reporting process, assist with breaking news coverage, increase reader engagement and expand the audience for our journalism.

Stacey joined us last April and quickly became known through her lively coaching sessions, entertaining videos and fun blog posts.

Before joining The Times, Stacey was...

The Times has begun using a new commenting platform for its online articles.

In a note to users, Managing Editor/Digital Jimmy Orr said editors hope the changes will give readers better ways to communicate with each other and Times journalists, as well as provide better tools for moderators.

If you're a frequent commenter, much in the new system will be familiar. The "report abuse" flags remain, and The Times will continue to rely on readers to help weed out offensive or inappropriate comments.

The goals of the commenting community also stay the same: Be as critical or as complimentary as you...

This is our annual look at the last year through the lens of metrics that we call “By the Numbers.” It’s intended to serve as a complementary note to Davan’s review of the year’s great journalism. Happily, they overlap.

And the news is good. Our journalism is being read more than ever before. In every category.

We continued to expand our audience in real-time, enterprise and investigative coverage. We grew our social media presence by record numbers. Mobile readership is up. Interactivity...

A memo to the newsroom from Times Editor Davan Maharaj:

As we embark on a new year, I want to take a moment to review the exceptional work you produced in 2013, and offer my heartfelt thanks for it.

We started the year with two ambitious goals: to make significant strides in our digital journalism and to continue the distinguished investigative and enterprise work that has long been a hallmark of The Times.

These are the pillars of our future, and all of you delivered: reporters and critics, photo and video journalists, editors on the assigning and copy desks, page designers, artists,...

Times Editor Davan Maharaj and Managing Editor Marc Duvoisin made two staff announcements regarding The Times' Cairo bureau:

As a foreign correspondent, Jeff Fleishman has proved himself a master of the character study. With a jeweler’s eye for detail and a storyteller’s voice, he has brought to life a kaleidoscope of colorful personalities, from Saudi cineastes to Egyptian revolutionaries.

Now he’s taking on a new territory with no shortage of characters: Hollywood.

After 11 years abroad for The Times, the last six in Cairo, Jeff joins Calendar’s Arts & Entertainment...

"Touching, painful and poignant" is how one reader described "Healing Sgt. Warren," a story in Sunday's Los Angeles Times. That reader was one of many who wrote to The Times with comments about the article by Christopher Goffard and photos and video by Rick Loomis.

Goffard told the story of Army Sgt. Jonathan Warren, who was riding in a Humvee in Iraq with four other soldiers, including his best friend from basic training, Scott Stephenson. When their vehicle hit a buried explosive, Stephenson was badly burned, and Warren blamed himself for not doing more for his friend.

Warren, who grew up in...

“A Soldier’s Wife” in Sunday’s Times, the story of an Iraq war veteran’s struggles, moved readers with its stark narrative by Christopher Goffard and photography by Rick Loomis.

The story, which Goffard and Loomis spent a year and a half chronicling, followed the plight of Candace Desmond-Woods, an Irvine woman fighting to hold her family together as her husband, Tom, battles post-traumatic stress disorder and alcoholism.

A soldier’s wife: Behind the story

Dozens of readers took the time to email The Times in response to the story.

Some of them said the...

For Times staff writer Catherine Saillant, an article led to a reader email, which led to a family reunion of sorts.

Saillant wrote last week about Fernando Anglero, who lives on the streets in downtown Los Angeles’ Arts District. He’s known for his off-color cardboard signs that one resident told Saillant bring a “fun energy” to the neighborhood. And he uses social media to market himself, despite not having an apartment, computer or cellphone.

He keeps close track of how many times his hashtag, #fernandolove, is used on Instagram.

With his interest in the online...

Times staff writer Bob Pool's profile of "Wyatt Earp" actor Hugh O'Brian appeared on the cover of Tuesday's LATExtra section. Though O'Brian played the lawman on TV, it was Pool and photojournalist Mel Melcon who found themselves chasing a bad guy as they reported the story.

As Melcon took the photo of O'Brian and his wife, Virginia, that appeared along with Pool's story, a thief made off with Virginia O'Brian's iPhone.

The couple had been sitting at a sidewalk table on Hollywood Boulevard when they leaned over to be photographed with Hugh O'Brian's staron the Walk of Fame. When they turned...

The Los Angeles Times has announced new guidelines for covering immigration.

The goal is to "provide relevance and context and to avoid labels."

That means stories will no longer refer to individuals as "illegal immigrants" or "undocumented immigrants," but instead will describe a person's circumstances.

A memo from The Times' Standards and Practices Committee announcing the change explains the move away from labels:

" 'Illegal immigrants' is overly broad and does not accurately apply in every situation. The alternative suggested by the 1995 guidelines, 'undocumented immigrants,' similarly...

The Los Angeles Times' Editorial Awards for 2012 were presented in a ceremony Thursday night, honoring the newsroom's best work from the past year.

At the ceremony, Editor Davan Maharaj announced a new honor, the Editor's Award for Persistence, which he dubbed the Golden Cockroach Award.

"The cockroach can't be exterminated and can't be stopped," he said. "You can stomp on them, take their food away, and deny their document requests -- but they're still there at the end of the day. Sounds a lot like many journalists over the last 10 years. And like many people in this room. Faced with...

What a month. Great journalism and smart strategies for digital coverage continued in February, resulting in the biggest audience to latimes.com in the history of the site.

We also recorded a 125% increase in video viewership, and L.A. Now and Entertainment set all-time records.

Breaking News

Nobody does breaking news better than the Los Angeles Times, and this was never more apparent than in our coverage of the manhunt for Christopher Dorner and his standoff with police.

The 24-7 approach, led by Shelby Grad, Kimi Yoshino, and Amanda Covarrubias  made the Los Angeles Times the go-to site...

The March 4 issue of the New Yorker includes a "Correction of the Week" from a familiar source -- the Los Angeles Times. It's a funny one, as corrections go, especially to those of us who like words:

Beauty column: In a Sunday Image article about hyaluronic acid, a skin-care ingredient and injectable filler, Dr. Nowell Solish was quoted as saying that if people change their minds after receiving an injection, there is an anecdote. It should have quoted him as saying there is an antidote.

Yes, we think patients would rather have an antidote (anything that works against an unwanted condition)...

The holiday decorations have long since been packed away, but there was one more gift that had yet to be delivered.

After reading The Times' story Dec. 26 of Christmas at the Midnight Mission in downtown Los Angeles, a reader from Redondo Beach jotted off a note and a check for $100 made out to a woman who was featured along with her daughter in a photo.

According to the article by Rosanna Xia, Latoya Williams had waited long hours with her 7-month-old daughter, Madison, for the toy giveaway at the mission. But it was her daughter’s first Christmas, and once she saw the girl playing with...

A memo to the newsroom from Editor Davan Maharaj and Managing Editor Marc Duvoisin:

We’re delighted to announce that Mark Porubcansky, a mainstay of the foreign desk for the last 14 years, is the new foreign editor of the Los Angeles Times.

Mark has been a force for clear thinking, clean writing and unwavering professionalism since he joined The Times as an assistant foreign editor in 1998.

He came to us from the Associated Press, where he served in the Moscow, Vienna and Hong Kong bureaus. He covered the dramatic days of glasnost and perestroika in the Soviet Union and reported on the...

The crossword in Sunday’s Arts & Books section was titled "The Last Sunday Crossword" and noted that according to the Mayan calendar, the world was going to end "this Friday, Dec. 21."

But, of course, "this" Friday is not Dec. 21 – it's the 14th.

Also, the solution to "last week's" puzzle didn't match the puzzle that ran Dec. 2. (A note to this effect ran in Tuesday's For the Record column.)

So what happened?

Many inquiring minds want to know. Goofing up the crossword is almost like the end of the world – except with Internet and phone service.

Reader Durga Bhoj of Rancho...

The space shuttle Endeavour’s final journey, a 12-mile crawl through the streets of Los Angeles, wowed crowds of admirers. For Times readers, it was no less stunning to watch a time-lapse video that condensed the shuttle’s three-day trek across the city to about 3 minutes. 

The video really took off on social media, and has been one of the most-viewed stories on latimes.com and most-shared content on Facebook and Twitter this week. And it earned its creator, Times photojournalist Bryan Chan, much applause.

But a few...

Two recent Times articles have examined the role of religion in the 2012 presidential race.

A Politics Now post addressed who would be the nation's "most religious" president. If Mitt Romney wins the election, would the title go to him? Or would it be held, as a political science professor suggested, by Jimmy Carter?

A second article previewed the vice presidential debate between Republican Paul Ryan and Democratic Vice President Joe Biden, both Catholics, and the political divide among Catholics in this country.

With that in mind, The Times asked readers on its Facebook page, "How important is a...