L.A. Times editor Jim Newton to join UCLA full time

A few days a week, Jim Newton works in a quiet office in Rolfe Hall that doesn’t belong to him. The room displays the name of a different professor on its door and the desk he uses isn’t his own.

On other days, he sits in a smaller room in one of the more frenetic places in downtown Los Angeles – the L.A. Times building.

“The environment at L.A. Times is business, and this is campus,” said Newton, who has taught journalism ethics to UCLA students as a part-time lecturer for four years.

Later this year, he will step away from the Times building, where he wrote stories and columns on the city for more than 25 years, to be a full-time faculty member in the Department of Communication Studies, with an office room for himself.

Newton, an editor for the L.A. Times, announced early this month that he is stepping down from his job at the L.A. Times.

At UCLA, Newton will create a quarterly journal for the Luskin School of Public Affairs and the Office of External Affairs, which will gather the university’s research projects on civics and the policies of Southern California.

The idea for the journal came from conversations between Frank Gilliam, dean of the Luskin School of Public Affairs; Carol Stogsdill, associate vice chancellor for communications and public outreach; and Newton, said Waiyi Tse, chief of staff at the Luskin School of Public Affairs.

Newton said writing about the university’s impact on Southern California intrigued him.

“UCLA has a lot to contribute to the area (of civics),” Newton said. “The journal is an opportunity to bring UCLA more into the conversation (about policy).”

Tim Groeling, chair of the UCLA Department of Communication Studies, said he thinks working at the university allows Newton more time to work as an author.

Newton worked with Leon Panetta, former secretary of defense, to create Panetta’s autobiography “Worthy Fights,” which was released last week. He has also written biographies for former U.S. president Dwight Eisenhower and former Chief Justice Earl Warren.

But Newton said he found covering local politics more interesting than covering national politics.

“(Local) institutions are those that affect people’s lives most directly,” Newton said. “A lot of energy and innovation that are coming in public life are coming from cities and counties.”

Groeling said Newton’s interest and knowledge about the city and local politics, as well as his thoughtfulness, impressed him.

“There are a lot of people who react in a snap judgment,” Groeling said. “But he takes a second and thinks through carefully.”

The concept for the journal has moved fairly rapidly, however, Newton said. It was developed about a month ago, and the journal is still under development, with no scheduled publishing date. Newton said he plans to talk with different academic departments next week to work on ways to find research projects for the journal.

The Luskin School of Public Affairs is working with Newton on the journal to highlight research projects relevant and impactful to the Southern California region, as well as projects that can be replicated elsewhere, Tse said.

As an editor of the new journal, Newton said he hopes to make it accessible to non-academic readers. Though he foresees many articles coming from Luskin-based research projects, Newton said he wants to be inclusive of every academic department on campus.

“It’s meant to be for lay readers,” Newton said. “I think of it as a thick, well-researched op-ed page that brings together research projects for an editorial audience.”

Though Newton said he plans to continue to serve as an occasional contributor to the L.A. Time’s opinion page, he expects to dedicate much of his time to his students. As a faculty member, he wants to serve as a mentor for students in his classes, just as New York Times columnist James Reston helped him when he worked as a clerk after he graduated from college.

“Reston did that because he solely wanted to give something to the young people,” Newton said. “I was the beneficary of the help and I would like to pay some of that back.”