Background
Baquet is the son of well-known New Orleans restaurateur, Edward Baquet, and is a member of a prominent New Orleans Creole family.
Baquet is the son of well-known New Orleans restaurateur, Edward Baquet, and is a member of a prominent New Orleans Creole family.
Baquet graduated from Saint Augustine High School in 1974. Baquet studied English at Columbia University from 1974 to 1978. However, he dropped out to pursue a career in journalism.
Baquet is the first Black American to serve as Executive Editor, the highest-ranking position in the New York Times newsroom. After college, Baquet was a reporter for The Times-Picayune of New Orleans, Louisiana, and the Chicago Tribune in Illinois, before joining The New York Times in April 1990 as a Metropolitan Desk Reporter. In May 1992, Baquet became the Special Projects Editor for the Business Desk.
In January 1994, Baquet held the same title.
However, he operated out of the Executive Editor"s office. In 2000, Baquet joined the Los Angeles Times as Managing Editor, and in 2005, Baquet became the Editor for the newspaper.
Baquet was fired after he publicly opposed plans to cut newsroom jobs. In 2007, Baquet rejoined The New York Times, where he held positions as the Washington Bureau Chief, National Editor, Assistant Managing Editor, and the Managing Editor.
Baquet was appointed to the Managing Editor position in September 2011, and promoted to Executive Editor on May 14, 2011.
Baquet was a finalist for the 1994 Pulitzer Prize in the same category. At the Los Angeles Times, Baquet edited a story published a few days before the 2003 California recall election that initiated the Gropegate controversy, raising concerns about gubernatorial candidate Arnold Schwarzenegger"s sexual misconduct. In 2006, American Broadcasting Company News reported that Baquet had killed a story about National Security Agency wiretaps of Americans.
Commenting on Baquet"s role in suppressing the National Security Agency story, constitutional lawyer Glenn Greenwald said of Baquet "..Dean Baquet does have a really disturbing history of practicing this form of journalism that is incredibly subservient to the American national security state, and if his past record and his past actions and statements are anything to go by, I think it signals that the New York Times is going to continue to descend downward into this sort of journalism that is very neutered and far too close to the very political factions that it"s supposed to exercise oversight over."
In January, 2015, in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo shooting, Dean Baquet called Marc Cooper, a journalism professor and blogger at the University of Southern California, "an asshole" on Facebook.
Cooper had criticised the New York Times for not publishing the cartoons of Muhammad, in the context of the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy.
Baquet is a member of the Board of Directors of the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Married Dylan Landis, September 6, 1986. 1 child, Ari Theogene Landis.