Iliana Limón Romero promoted to Los Angeles Times assistant managing editor for Sports

The following announcement was sent on behalf of Executive Editor Kevin Merida:

Iliana Limón Romero has been named assistant managing editor for Sports, reporting to Deputy Managing Editor Julia Turner.

In her new role, Limón Romero joins The Times masthead and becomes the first female sports editor in its history, and the only Latina sports editor at a major U.S. newspaper.

Limón Romero, who joined the paper as deputy sports editor in 2021, has built bridges both within The Times newsroom and in the larger Southern California sports community. She has led initiatives to cover new spaces in new ways, beefing up the department’s investigative coverage, helping lead The Times’ successful cross-departmental Super Bowl LVI coverage and building major community-facing events that helped The Times reach new audiences.

She has also helped oversee ambitious and acclaimed coverage from its talented sports team. In 2021, The Times was the lone large media entity (over 100,000 circulation) to win the prestigious Associated Press Sports Editors “Grand Slam,” placing in the top 10 nationally for its Sunday and daily print editions, website, multimedia project and writing categories.

An El Paso native, Limón Romero was the sports editor at the Orlando Sentinel and co-founder of the website Pro Soccer USA before she joined the Los Angeles Times. At the Sentinel, she was on the team that covered the Pulse nightclub shooting and was a Pulitzer finalist for breaking news.

Limón Romero is also the chair of the Assn. for Women in Sports Media and the co-chair of the National Assn. of Hispanic Journalists Sports Task Force. She helped coordinate AWSM’s 2021 digital convention, assisted with the organization’s internship and mentor programs and is contributing to the group’s return to an in-person convention in August. Limón Romero, a 2020 recipient of NAHJ’s Dale Award, also coordinated the NAHJ Sports Task Force’s 2021 digital convention programming and is working to help develop that team and its work.