Josh Haner will be The New York Times’ first photo futurist

We are delighted to announce a new role for Josh Haner, who will become The Times’ first photo futurist. In this newly created role, Josh will join the leadership team of the photo department and will be our lead for all technology initiatives, partnerships, workflow enhancements and tool development related to photography and visual storytelling.

The Times photo department is unrivaled, known for our high-impact visual enterprise and our essential live news coverage. Josh will help ensure that our practices are best positioning us for continued competitive advantage in both areas. He will do so by leading the photo staff in experiments designed to improve workflows and develop innovative approaches to the gathering and presentation of our visual journalism. And his work will be aimed at facilitating a more collaborative and inclusive environment that encourages broader participation in the visual curation of our report.

Josh will work closely with photo leadership, publishing product leadership, the photo tools team and NDS (Newsroom Development and Support) to plan and coordinate the continued design and newsroom wide rollout of the new suite of photo tools. He will also work with R&D on journalistic applications of emerging technologies. He will investigate tools and workflow to advance real-time photojournalism presentations to deploy in our live coverage. He will spearhead equipment and technology explorations for staff photographers in the field. He will clarify and streamline technical processes and filing protocols for photojournalists gathering video. And he will oversee continued efforts to digitize and make discoverable our treasured photo archive.

Josh brings a unique set of qualifications to this role as an experienced photo editor, an award-winning photojournalist and a gifted technologist. Josh began his career at The Times as a photo editor in 2006. He was one of the co-founders and editors of The Lens Blog, and became a staff photographer in 2010. In 2014, Josh won the Pulitzer Prize for feature photography for his work documenting the recovery of Jeff Bauman, a survivor of the Boston Marathon bombing. He has spent the last seven years documenting the global effects of climate change, engaging in ambitious cross-functional newsroom collaborations, and often utilizing video, drone work and time lapses in his storytelling. Josh has also been instrumental in shaping our live event photo coverage. He built the original remote-streaming backpack that has, over many iterations, allowed us to set the industry standard for high-speed visual news publishing.

Josh’s depth of experience across so many facets of our work is invaluable, and his innovative thinking will help shape the future operation of the department.

Please join us in congratulating Josh on his exciting new role.