Press contact: press@localnewsforla.org
LOS ANGELES — April 17, 2025 — The Los Angeles Local News Initiative, a new nonprofit news organization serving the L.A. region, has selected decorated local journalist Kristen Muller to be its founding executive editor.
Muller will design and lead the initiative’s newsroom as it launches neighborhood publications across L.A. County, expanding its service area from the community-centered model of its first newsroom, Boyle Heights Beat. With several new job openings posted and more to come, the newsroom will operate and support local newsrooms and partnerships in L.A. Newsrooms will cover neighborhood, regional, and state levels in service of L.A. communities, adding original, fair and accurate, on-the-ground reporting in more areas. It will also work closely with other local media organizations in L.A. to do collaborative reporting, share content, and to ensure more journalism is accessible to more people, while elevating stories that are representative and inclusive of all of L.A.’s residents.
“We need a new kind of local news—one built by and for communities, creating new spaces where people can convene, hold power accountable, and connect what’s happening on their block and in their neighborhood to the rest of our city, region, and state,” Muller said.
Muller has a long history of local, public service journalism in L.A. and leading newsrooms through a rapidly changing media landscape. As Chief Content Officer of Southern California Public Radio (LAist.com and 89.3), she transformed the organization from a broadcast-centric, legacy NPR station to a multimedia local newsroom designed to help Southern Californians navigate, connect, discover and affect change in their communities.
Her forward-looking editorial strategy, built explicitly around audience needs, transformed how stories were identified, reported, and distributed. It led to a doubling of the audience, multiple national journalism awards, the development of innovative digital products, and groundbreaking partnerships with ethnic and in-language media organizations. Muller was also founder of LAist Studios, a podcast division that shares L.A’s stories to the world. Under her leadership, the unit produced multiple award-winning shows that garnered critical acclaim from The New Yorker, Vulture and The New York Times while generating millions of downloads.
"I am thrilled to welcome Kristen Muller as our Executive Editor. Her extraordinary track record makes her the ideal leader for our ambitious vision," said Michele Siqueiros, CEO of the L.A. Local News Initiative. "Kristen has demonstrated exactly what we need – the ability to grow digital audiences and deepen community engagement, all while maintaining the highest journalistic standards. Her Emmy Award-winning experience and two decades in newsrooms from CBS to LAist prove she understands how powerful local journalism can both inform and empower Angelenos. At this critical moment when our communities need trusted information to navigate wildfire recovery and beyond, Kristen's innovative approach to community-centered journalism will ensure we are not just reporting on Los Angeles, but truly serving its diverse neighborhoods and people."
Prior to LAist, Muller held various roles at CBS News. She is a University of California, Berkeley, graduate, was a John S. Knight Fellow at Stanford University, and serves on the boards of Inside Climate News and Trusting News.
As Muller prepares to join the organization later this month, the organization has launched searches for several new openings, including for managing editors, head of audience, fundraising and development, among other roles. The job descriptions and other details can be found at http://localnewsforla.org/jobs.
The L.A. Local News Initiative was announced last fall amid drastic losses in local journalism resources, when a coalition of Los Angeles media and philanthropy leaders joined forces to raise over $17 million to grow and support local news in the region. It was created following a deep research and community listening process led by local civic leaders and in partnership with the American Journalism Project, which included input from nearly 1,000 Angelenos.
In keeping with the organization’s community focus, Muller was hired following an extensive and competitive public search that included community input from a panel of residents who had the opportunity to meet candidates and ask them questions. The search was led by a search committee of journalism and media experts, including L.A. Local News Initiative board members Kevin Merida, former executive editor of the L.A. Times, and Giselle Fernandez, news anchor at Spectrum news; Todd Purdum, author and veteran journalist; Moira Shourie, executive director of Zócalo; and Loretta Chao, head of the Startup Studio and local news innovation at the American Journalism Project, which is providing incubation support to the initiative.
About the L.A. Local News Initiative
The Los Angeles Local News Initiative is a nonprofit organization based in Los Angeles, fiscally sponsored by the American Journalism Project. With $17 million raised, we aim to create a better Los Angeles by restoring local reporting resources so all communities have free access to information needed for civic engagement, quality of life, and holding decision makers accountable. The initiative receives support from a broad coalition of philanthropies, anchored by investments from The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, the Spiegel Family Fund, and the American Journalism Project
