Jeremy Ashkenas returns to The New York Times as head of Opinion graphics

Jeremy Ashkenas

It’s always nice to welcome colleagues back to The Times, and today we have that pleasure: Jeremy Ashkenas will rejoin the Times as graphics director for Opinion.

Jeremy’s work has always circled the intersection of journalism and technology, and we’re excited to have him bring his talents to Opinion, overseeing our incredibly talented graphics team. As a member of Opinion’s senior leadership team, he will also collaborate on visual journalism closely across the department, helping to bring to life the best of what Times Opinion has to offer.

Previously at The Times, Jeremy worked in the newsroom as a graphics editor and interactive news editor. Highlights include pieces on Israeli settlements in the West Bank, the economic impact of the Great Recession, the hacking of John Podesta’s emails, ISIS expansion along the Tigris and Euphrates, and, for Opinion, a budget calculator to accompany an editorial arguing for a higher minimum wage. His work with his colleagues won a Gerald Loeb Award and three Malofiej Awards.

Steve Duenes, deputy managing editor in charge of the newsroom’s visual journalism, said: “Jeremy Ashkenas is an imaginative journalist who is nearly unmatched in his digital understanding and capabilities. When he was a member of The Times’s graphics department, he pitched scores of ideas and worked on a variety of subjects — sometimes as a reporter, sometimes as a designer and developer, and sometimes as all three. He has the kinds of ideas that bring others along, and he’s a generous colleague. I’m excited to see what he does in Opinion.”

Jeremy recently served as principal engineer at Substack, where he built publishing tools for independent writers, and at Observable, where he helped design and develop a computational notebook for data visualization. Before joining The Times, he was the lead developer at DocumentCloud, a nonprofit tool that helps journalists organize, annotate and publish the primary-source documents behind their reporting. On the more technical side, he wrote several pieces of open-source software, including Underscore.js, Backbone.js and CoffeeScript.

Jeremy was born and raised in Berkeley, Calif., and holds an undergraduate degree in literary systems from Brown University.

Please join us in welcoming Jeremy to Opinion.