Maane Khatchatourian joins the Los Angeles Times as a deputy editor for Entertainment and Arts

The following announcement was sent on behalf of Assistant Managing Editor Craig Nakano:

I’m pleased to announce that Maane Khatchatourian has joined the Entertainment and Arts team as a deputy editor.

Khatchatourian comes to us from Variety, where she has been one of the key architects of that site’s dramatic audience growth. Over the last nine years she has proved her knack for breaking news and for smart, strategic coverage of major events. In her most recent role as senior news editor, she assigned and edited stories responding to the cultural conversations of the day. She developed digital strategies for awards shows and film festivals, and she also helped to deploy a portfolio of newsletters — experience we will call upon as she steers our new L.A. Goes Out newsletter.

We’ve been impressed with her understanding of beat reporting and of the need to balance exclusives and enterprise features with daily news. Khatchatourian has a reputation for incredible hustle and the ability to juggle a dozen things at once, all while maintaining a collaborative spirit.

We’re also happy to report her arrival represents the addition of more homegrown talent to our team. She grew up in Glendale and participated in the Saturdays at The Times high school workshop. She later interned at one of The Times’ community newspapers, the Glendale News-Press, before moving on to other jobs, including site editor for KCET.org.

Khatchatourian has a bachelor’s degree from UC Santa Barbara, graduating summa cum laude in communication, art history and sociocultural linguistics. She earned her master’s in journalism from Columbia University. She started Monday.