The New York Times: Chris Orr joins Times Opinion

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The New York Times simply wouldn’t be The New York Times without our incredible array of Opinion columnists, who for decades have been among the most trusted voices and influential idea shapers in American journalism. We couldn’t be prouder of our current team of colleagues and the insight, originality, versatility and energy they bring to their writing and arguments. We know our audience feels the same way: On Saturdays alone, when people could be doing so many things, Opinion is a must-read destination because of Maureen Dowd, Ross Douthat and Jamelle Bouie. Indeed, every day, readers come to The Times because they have deep and faithful relationships with our columnists. It is a bond we value and take very seriously, and seek to nurture and strengthen by adding exciting new columnists — most recently, Carlos Lozada and Lydia Polgreen next month — and by supporting the ambition and creativity of our writers through great editing.

To that end, we’re very excited to announce that Christopher Orr will join us in September in a new role in Opinion, signature voices editor. He brings decades of experience in idea-driven journalism and commentary, and will work with us and our excellent columnist editors, editorial assistants and others to do all we can to help our columnists and newsletter writers in their great work.

Chris joins us from The Atlantic, where he was a senior editor from 2010 to 2019 and a contributing writer in the years since. There, he edited features and cover stories nominated for multiple National Magazine Awards, including one on Donald Triplett, the first person ever diagnosed with autism and another, in 2011, by Matthieu Aikins. He has worked regularly with writers such as Caitlin Flanagan, James Parker, Hanna Rosin and Frank Foer. Before coming to The Atlantic, he worked as the executive editor of The New Republic and the domestic policy editor for The Washington Post, along with earlier stints at U.S. News and Mother Jones.

As signature voices editor, Chris will be foremost a sounding board and ideas partner with the columnists, newsletter writers and their editors and editorial assistants. As he told us in one of our conversations, he envisions the role as wholly collaborative, doing whatever he can to support our writers in exploring and framing their ideas, interests and enthusiasms. Chris will be interacting with everyone in that communal spirit — thinking through, say, whether a great idea is better as a 3,000-word Sunday Opinion cover story rather than as a 900-word column, or how to bring in graphics or video or other colleagues to team up on an ambitious swing. Many of our columnists are deeply interested in working with photo, graphics, video, audio and more on ideas, pieces and projects, and Chris will be a key player in launching and landing those ambitions. He will work closely with our great columnist and newsletter editors to support them however he can.

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