Henry Chu, former foreign correspondent, returns to The Times as deputy news editor in London

Los Angeles Times Executive Editor Norman Pearlstine and Managing Editor Scott Kraft made the following announcement:

We are thrilled to announce that Henry Chu, a decorated former foreign correspondent for The Times, is returning to the staff to take on the role of deputy news editor based in London.

In his new position, Chu will work closely with both the News Desk and the Foreign/National desk to provide an early start to our digital news operations. His duties will include watching over the Home Page in the middle of the Los Angeles night as well as editing our correspondents in other parts of the world. He will start in March.

Chu, who grew up in Orange County, joined the paper three decades ago as a member of the MetPro program. He became a temporary reporter a year later in the San Fernando Valley office and moved to the foreign staff in 1998. His international career began with a five-year stint as our Beijing bureau chief, followed by two years in Rio de Janeiro and three in Delhi. He moved to London in 2008 and spent six years there as our bureau chief, before leaving the paper in 2015. (He was a Nieman fellow during the 2014-15 academic year.)

He has most recently been the international editor of Variety, where he expanded coverage by hiring the magazine’s first full-time accredited correspondent in Beijing; wrote cover stories; conceived and edited the magazine’s first globally themed issues (now annual fixtures) and oversaw Variety’s print dailies at the Berlin and Venice film festivals.