Sia Michel is The New York Times' new Culture editor

Sia Michel

The Culture desk has generated some of the most exciting journalism at The Times in recent years, from dynamic visual storytelling to insightful reporting and fresh criticism that has been embraced by readers and won distinction in the industry.

We are eager to see the department build on those successes and break new ground, as we shift further from print-driven arts coverage to a truly urgent and digital-first Culture report.

For that crucial mission, we are turning to a leader of fierce intellect, entrepreneurial spirit and relentless creativity to be our new Culture editor: Sia Michel.

“Sia is as comfortable innovating new forms as she is in shepherding more traditional ones,” Sam Sifton said, “and she does both brilliantly.”

She was the primary editor of Wesley Morris in his run to a Pulitzer Prize in criticism in 2021, then brought us a prize again in 2022 with Salamishah Tillet.

She also worked closely with Alicia Desantis and Michael Kimmelman on one of Culture’s most dazzling digital projects of the year, the first look at Michael Heizer’s mammoth land art project by Kimmelman, which drew a huge audience and intense reader reaction.

(To pull that one off, Sia decamped to the Nevada desert with Kimmelman and Alicia’s team to scout out the project and then to shape and edit Kimmelman’s piece to capture a new kind of visual criticism for The Times.)

And since Gilbert Cruz’s departure for Books in August, Sia has been serving as interim Culture editor, working with the brilliant Michael Cooper to continue his build-out of the department’s news operations and overseeing coverage ranging from Pattern Recognition to big-ticket notebooks on the fall of Kanye West, “The Slap” and, just this past weekend, the responsibility of watching the video of the Memphis police beating of Tyre Nichols.

Culture is at an important inflection point, as we consider how to modernize our criticism and establish ourselves as a leader in service journalism, how to expand our coverage of pop culture and move beyond New York-centric events, and how to scale visual and digital-first story forms.

Sia has always been a trailblazer. In 2002, she became the first woman to edit a major-circulation rock magazine, when she was named editor in chief of Spin, which at the time had a paid circulation of more than 500,000. She joined The Times in 2007 as pop music editor. She was later promoted to editor of Arts & Leisure and, since 2018, she has been deputy Culture editor.

Sia is a champion of big-swing essays, in-depth features and service journalism, an experimenter, a calm and empathetic leader of people and an editor who the best writers admire and yearn to write for.

We are thrilled to see her take the reins of Culture at this important moment of change.