The New York Times: Paul Volpe returns to Politics

Paul Volpe

I am overjoyed to announce that Paul Volpe is coming home to the Politics desk.

For those who don’t know him (there must be one or two), Paul was deputy politics editor in the 2012, 2014 and 2016 cycles and “a major force for high-impact journalism and expansive creativity,” as Carolyn Ryan put it, before he left The Times to become executive editor of Politico. There, he helped lead coverage of the Trump administration, the 2018 midterms and the 2020 campaign.

He returned to The Times in 2021 to lead the cross-departmental Trust team, which pioneered the enhanced bylines and in-line explainers that have made how we do our work, and the care and professionalism that go into it, far more transparent to our readers.

Much of that work has involved how The Times covers politics. But Paul let me know a while back that he was longing to get back into being more directly involved in running campaign coverage. To that end, he will build out our weekend operation, planning for and deploying reporters to cover tentpole political events and breaking news, and helping to conceive and land many of our biggest pieces of enterprise and news.

We are driven to innovate, as the Politics desk always has in presidential cycles, and bringing Paul aboard will turbocharge our creative powers. Throughout his career — as a political editor for The Washington Post and deputy Washington bureau chief of The Times — he has been a pioneer of alternative storytelling forms, among other things spearheading the invention of The Times’s live chat and live briefing.

Beyond his form-shattering thinking and impressive ability to get stuff done, Paul’s political smarts and news judgment, energy, experience, deep knowledge of and warm relationships across the newsroom — and the sheer joy and fun that he brings to his work and to his colleagues — will make him a tremendous addition to our team.

He starts on April 12.