Kimi Yoshino, founding editor-in-chief of The Baltimore Banner, will leave to become a managing editor at The Washington Post. Photo courtesy The Baltimore Banner.
Kimi Yoshino, founding editor-in-chief of The Baltimore Banner, will leave to become a managing editor at The Washington Post. Photo courtesy The Baltimore Banner.

Kimi Yoshino, who has led The Baltimore Banner as editor-in-chief for three-and-a-half years, including the newsroom’s Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of Baltimore’s opioid crisis, will step down to become a managing editor at The Washington Post.

“Just as I was driven by the challenge to move to Baltimore to help save local news, I’m now excited to tackle another important mission,” Yoshino said in a Banner article. “I am eager to help reinvigorate one of the most storied institutions in American journalism.”

The Banner will immediately launch a national search for a new editor-in-chief. Brian McGrory, a Banner board member, former Boston Globe editor-in-chief, and current chair of Boston University’s journalism department, will help lead the newsroom during the interim period, the Banner reported.

Stewart Bainum Jr., the Choice Hotels International chairman who founded the Banner and serves as its board chair, commended Yoshino for helping make the Banner what it is today.

“She has been our architect — the person who took an audacious idea and with grace and grit made it real,” Bainum said in the Banner article. “We had a vision. We had no playbook. We just had a belief that local journalism still matters and she made it happen.”

Before coming to Baltimore, Yoshino served as managing editor at the Los Angeles Times. In October 2021, she was named inaugural editor-in-chief of The Baltimore Banner, which officially launched in June 2022.

The announcement of Yoshino’s departure comes on the heels of the Banner listing several open positions as it continues to grow its staff. Current openings include roles for a copy chief, breaking news reporter, and Baltimore County and Montgomery County reporters, as well as product and sales jobs.

The Banner lists a newsroom of 83—currently making it the biggest in the state. (The Baltimore Sun, which lists 81 newsroom employees, is also hiring for numerous positions.)

Marcus Dieterle is the managing editor of Baltimore Fishbowl, telling the stories of communities across the Baltimore region. Marcus helped lead the team to win a Best of Show award for Website of General...

One reply on “Baltimore Banner editor-in-chief Kimi Yoshino will move to Washington Post”

  1. Why would anyone in their right mind go work at The Washington Post these days? Bezos is doing his best to completely ruin it.

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