The Masthead

Margaret Ashworth is the fourth publisher of The HY Times and the first who did not personally know a founder. She started in the classifieds department in 1987, and maintains that everything worth knowing about a newspaper can be learned by answering its phones for two years.

Desmond Rourke has edited the Times since 2011 and reported for it long before that, covering everything from planning commissions to premiere nights. He keeps a list of every correction the paper has run on his watch, and reads it once a year to stay humble.

Alma Fuentes-Wray runs the daily report, the budget meeting, and — by newsroom consensus — the building. She came to the Times from a wire desk in 2004 and has missed one deadline since, for reasons she will explain if asked at the holiday party.

Nell Prosser covers the neighborhood beat: streets, schools, small businesses, and whatever the coyotes are up to this week. She joined the Times in 2021 and files most of her stories from the walk between interviews.

Theodore Kang has covered Los Angeles City Hall for the Times since 2012, which means he has read more planning documents than any living person should. He believes every city budget is a mystery novel where the butler is always parking.

Vivienne Okafor covers the studios, the stages, and the crews who actually make the pictures. Her grandfather was a Times copy boy during the war; she says the family has been trying to get back on the masthead ever since. She succeeded in 2009.

June Maravich edits the editorial and letters pages, a job she describes as “refereeing a hundred-year argument the neighborhood is having with itself.” She joined the Times in 2001 and still reads every letter, including yours.

Ray Delgado has photographed Hollywood for the Times since 1993 — parades, fires, ribbon cuttings, and thirty-one consecutive years of the same corner of the Boulevard, every January, for the archive. He shoots digital now and forgives no one for it.