By Sasha Park · Republished 2026-05-21 · Originally reported by Pandora Young on FishbowlLA, 2012
In early 2012, one of the more consequential career moves in Los Angeles journalism arrived with a quiet headline: a newspaper editor crossing into public radio.
Then
Just one month after stepping down as editor of the Los Angeles Times, Russ Stanton had a new job. In January 2012 he joined the public radio station KPCC as vice president of content.
KPCC framed the hire as part of an aggressive push: the nonprofit wanted to become the preeminent regional source for both broadcast and online news, with deeper, more enterprising and more investigative coverage. One of Stanton’s first assignments was to hire an executive editor for the newsroom — building a team rather than cutting one, which FishbowlLA noted was likely a welcome change of pace after his years steering the contracting Times.
Now
Stanton’s move turned out to be an early signal of a lasting shift in Los Angeles media. Through the 2010s, public radio — KPCC in particular, under the Southern California Public Radio banner — expanded local reporting and digital news even as the region’s newspapers continued to shrink. KPCC’s LAist brand grew into one of the city’s significant local news sources.
The broader pattern Stanton embodied — veteran newspaper editors carrying their standards into public radio, nonprofits and digital startups — became one of the defining career stories of the decade, as the institutions that once anchored the business could no longer guarantee a place to land.
Original report archived on the Wayback Machine.