Julie Makinen, a veteran of the Los Angeles Times, International New York Times and Washington Post, on Friday was named executive editor of The Desert Sun in Palm Springs, a newsroom recognized five of the last seven years as the best of its size in California.

Over her journalism career, Makinen has managed newsrooms in Beijing, Hong Kong and Los Angeles. More recently, she was a fellow at Stanford University and a faculty member at San Jose State University, where she studied the California media industry and taught a journalism course on building news applications for voice platforms like Alexa.

“I’m thrilled to take the helm of The Desert Sun, which under the leadership of Greg Burton has proven itself to be one of the best small newsrooms in the country,” said Makinen, 46. “I look forward to expanding the Sun’s commitment to watchdog and investigative journalism, community engagement and innovative storytelling in text, audio and video.”

Makinen, who first visited Palm Springs nearly 20 years ago and has lived in the city part-time since 2016, said the Coachella Valley is at the forefront of many national trends.

“In many ways, I see the region as being on the cutting edge of challenges and trends – from the environment, to aging well, to healthcare and immigration policy – that the rest of the country will deal with years from now,” she said. “We can tell these stories not only for the benefit of our home audience, but the rest of the nation as well.”

Makinen also affirmed The Desert Sun will continue its mission of reporting on local issues and holding powerful institutions accountable.

“These days, there’s a lot of attention focused on national politics, but my feeling is that 90% of what affects people’s day-to-day lives doesn’t happen in Washington,” she said. “It happens at the city, county and state level.”

Makinen also hopes to seek diverse funding sources and encourage the newsroom to experiment with technology and create new features and events.

The Desert Sun “already has the most essential ingredient to make it successful: Smart, ambitious, passionate journalists who are highly engaged with the community,” Makinen said. “The more of those we can add, the more successful we will be. Financial support from the local community – subscribers and advertisers – is vital to making that happen.”

Important stories ‘a passion Julie shares’

In Palm Springs, Makinen replaces Greg Burton, who in April was named executive editor of The Arizona Republic.

“Julie has devoted her career to great journalism – and this is a community that embraces quality reporting,” said Greg Burton, Executive Editor of The Arizona Republic and Regional Editor for USA TODAY Network’s West Region. “Better still, this is a newsroom that strives to tell important stories and that’s a passion Julie shares. I’m excited about this team.”

Under Burton’s leadership, Desert Sun journalists have received awards for coverage of the environment, energy and public safety.

A virtual reality project on the Salton Sea produced by journalism students at the University of Southern California in collaboration with The Desert Sun won the Online News Association’s Pro-Am award in 2017.

The same year, The Desert Sun and the USA TODAY Network-California won a national Edward R. Murrow award for a video on inmates released from jail early under Prop 47.

And in 2016, a Desert Sun and USA TODAY Network investigation into the crisis of groundwater depletion won Stanford University’s Knight-Risser Prize for Western Environmental Journalism.

Desert Sun journalists have also won acclaim from the Associated Press Media Editors and Society of Business Editors and Writers for reporting on the high rate of accidental deaths among Marines and the challenges posed by land leased from members of the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians.

Randy Lovely, Vice President/Community News for the USA TODAY Network, said Makinen’s experience -- both in journalism and in Palm Springs -- will serve The Desert Sun well.

“Julie has great credentials as a journalist, and I’m confident she will help the Desert Sun continue to elevate the quality of its journalism,” he said.

“And as someone who has been a part-time Palm Springs resident, her love of the community will come through under her leadership.”

Lovely also has a tie to the community as former top editor of The Desert Sun from 2000 to 2002.

From paper route, to top editor

Makinen grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. She also got her first job in journalism there -- as a delivery girl for The Plain Dealer.

Makinen later completed internships at the Palo Alto Weekly and Sacramento Bee before landing a job at the Washington Post in 1994. She would go on to spend six years at the newspaper in different roles, including a turn as Weekend Foreign Editor.

In 2001, Makinen joined the Los Angeles Times, where she served as assistant foreign editor responsible for the newspaper’s coverage of China, Japan and the Koreas. She later became deputy A1 editor and deputy business editor.

During this period, Makinen also covered the Middle East. The Times dispatched her to Baghdad during the Iraq war in 2003. In 2004, she became a trainer with the nonprofit Institute for War and Peace Reporting, helping to launch the Pajhwok Afghan News agency in Kabul. She also reported from Afghanistan.

Makinen’s career then took her to Hong Kong, where she became deputy business editor for Asia at the International New York Times during the global financial crisis.

“Being a foreign correspondent taught me to ask questions about the most basic things – things that locals might consider totally unremarkable,” she said. “I often found that once I started digging into these ‘ordinary’ topics, I gained a completely new understanding of the culture, economy, or history of a place – or uncovered something new and weird that locals agreed was newsworthy. I hope I can maintain that gimlet eye at The Desert Sun.”

Makinen returned to the Los Angeles Times in 2010, spending three years as the newspaper’s film editor. There, she led a year-long investigation into the members of the Motion Picture Academy, finding that the overwhelming majority of known members were white or male.

At the same time, Makinen also experimented with new technologies, co-authoring a travel app on downtown Los Angeles, DTLA Explorer.

In 2013, Makinen began a three-year stint as the Times’ Beijing Bureau Chief, running a six-person bureau and overseeing the Times’ network of stringers in Asia. As part of her reporting there, she covered the cleanup of the Fukushima nuclear power plant and tsunami recovery in Japan.

Makinen said she hopes to use her international reporting experience to surface stories that show how people in the Coachella Valley are connected to the wider world -- whether through military service, work, immigration or the region’s relationship with Mexico.

“This proximity has profound implications for our economy, our culture, our educational system, our healthcare and our politics,” she said. “We have an incredible responsibility to report on these issues, bringing stories to life from both sides of the border. I hope to leverage my international experience to bring more of those stories into the Desert Sun.

After returning to California, Makinen was one of 18 journalists selected from a pool of more than 500 applicants to become a JSK Journalism Fellow at Stanford University in 2016. At Stanford, she researched California’s media landscape and created a prototype for a news organization that would gather news from around the state.

Makinen became a visiting faculty member at San Jose State University in 2018, while writing case studies on companies, including Uber, at Stanford Graduate School of Business.

She is a 1994 graduate of Stanford University. In 2003, she received a master’s degree in East Asian Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles. She has family in the Bay Area and Houston.

Also new to The Desert Sun is Lindsay Grant, local Director of Sales for the USA Today Network. She joined the newspaper in June and was previously a sales leader at Republic Media in Phoenix. She reports to Anthony Bratti, Regional President of Local Sales, who with Grant represents the USA Today Network locally.

Makinen said she looks forward to getting to know the Coachella Valley more deeply.

“I’ll be doing a lot of listening, both inside the newsroom and out in the community,” Makinen said. “My door is open to anybody. I look forward to going to a lot of events and meeting neighbors. Maybe even Barry Manilow.”

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