Kelcie Pegher to lead expanded team as L.A. Times director of platforms

Sent on behalf of Managing Editor Sara Yasin, Deputy Managing Editor Shelby Grad and Assistant Managing Editor for Audience Samantha Melbourneweaver:

We are excited to announce Kelcie Pegher’s new role as director of platforms.

With her expanded duties, Pegher will unite programming of all our platforms, from home screens to social media, under one unit. This will include alerts, social video and our partnerships with aggregators and other media entities. The goal is to develop centralized, streamlined workflows that both foster more creativity in how we present our content and build new best practices that align with major changes we are seeing in the industry.

Pegher will oversee three distinct disciplines and be the leader of our platform operations both in handling breaking news and in coming up with the best ways to show off our signature work.

• Platforms. This is the team that works each day to show off our work across a variety of places, whether that be newsletters, alerts, our homepage or social media. The goal is to bring a more coordinated approach to how we promote our work and connect with audiences. Our home platforms — desktop, mobile, app — remain powerful tools to promote our best journalism, build relationships with our readers and signal our place as the leading source of news and information for California and the West. Alerts are one of our most powerful tools to reach out to our core audiences. By utilizing newsletters and mobile alerts, we will tell our audience the most important stories of the day, reaching them where they are — their inboxes. As social media morphs and changes, we will continue to meet audiences where they are. We anticipate that social media will continue to fragment, which means our team will prioritize based on the spaces and stories with the most opportunity.
• Social video. A small team will create and collaborate on original video for our social platforms including reporter-created content such as eyewitness videos during breaking news situations and videos about the things that make California great (think lifestyle coverage), and process user-generated content. They will also work to train the staff on how to make social video a bigger part of day-to-day coverage. Pegher will ensure coverage for social video aligns with the news-of-the-day programming across platforms and work to create standards to make our video presence cohesive.
• Partners. Pegher and the team will continue the successful work with news partners such Apple, Yahoo, MSN, Flipboard and Smart News while seeking other money-generating alignments.

More about the staffers working with platforms:

Georgia Geen joined the audience team as a multiplatform editor working on our news aggregator partnerships in 2022. A graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University, she helps to manage the day-to-day coordination, push alerts and optimization of Times journalism on news aggregator platforms. In the last year, Geen has implemented a strategy for Reddit that has elevated our presence and given us new ways to use the platform. Her keen eye to find the right story on the right platform will be critical as we evolve.

Eduardo Gonzalez has been a web producer and writer at the Los Angeles Times since 2014. He was hired to start up High School Insider as a producer and copy editor. Gonzalez joined the Sports department shortly after to help with web production. He hails from Arizona and is a graduate of USC, Georgetown University and the University of Florida.

Thomas Suh Lauder will continue his work as an assistant editor. A graduate of the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, Lauder has been with the Los Angeles Times since 2000, specializing in informational graphics, data journalism and digital mapping. His passion for creating systems will be critical as we find better ways to combine our presence and elevate and display our journalism.

Jevon Phillips joined the Los Angeles Times in 2004 as the evening producer on the website’s homepage and in sports. He made the transition to entertainment five years later and helped maintain its online section. Readers may know his byline from a number of stories on anything from comic books to hip-hop dance to TV fairy tales. He has his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from USC.

And those helping on social video:

Albert Brave Tiger Lee is a Southern California native, son of Korean immigrants, a father and a staff video journalist at the Los Angeles Times, which he joined in 1999. His work spans various mediums of visual storytelling and has been recognized for various disciplines including a national Emmy Award for News and Documentary, an RFK Journalism Award, Pictures of the Year International honors, the National Press Photographers Assn.’s Best of Photojournalism Award and Columbia University’s Dart Award. He is a graduate of Cal State Fullerton.

Diego Medrano is a video editor and has been with the Los Angeles Times since 2018. He has written and shot photos for the Calendar and Saturday sections. Medrano graduated with a bachelor’s in English and communications with an emphasis on radio, TV and film from Cal State Fullerton.