Sia Michel | The New York Times
We are delighted to announce that Mike Peed will be joining the Culture desk as a senior staff editor.
As Culture continues to build up its news-gathering operations, it is expanding its coverage on weekends, when so much news happens in the worlds of arts and entertainment. Mike, a seasoned, graceful editor who exudes calm under pressure, will lead the charge on Culture’s weekend news editing. He will assign and edit news stories and longer-term enterprise and investigative pieces, working closely with the reporter Derrick Bryson Taylor and editors including Michael Cooper, Jason Bailey and Kevin Flynn.
Mike joins Culture from the Politics desk, where he has been an editor since 2023. He was a key editor on election coverage last year, including working solo on Friday and Saturday evenings, and says that “every day felt like a sprint.” He added, “Sometime in spring of 2024, we basically went permanently live, and I handled every kind of edit you could imagine, including breaking news, blog items, enterprise and our newsletter.”
As David Halbfinger, the editor of the Politics desk, put it: “Mike was our rock every Saturday, often working double shifts and editing coverage of countless Trump rallies, a highly challenging and important responsibility. He was in the chair when Donald Trump was shot, and published Michael Gold’s first report of the shooting within seconds. No matter the story — from the smallest news update to the biggest enterprise — Mike had sure hands, a devotion to accuracy and fairness, and was the picture of calm. He also can be counted on to break the tension with his delightful sense of humor. We will miss him.”
Prior to Politics, Mike worked on the Flex desk and edited across a range of departments: Business, National, International, Books, Real Estate, Obits and Travel, among others. Earlier at The Times, he worked in Opinion, establishing its research department and assigning and editing pieces for the Op-Ed page and what was then the Sunday Review. As a writer, he has contributed to the Book Review and Metro, and wrote this obit of the musician Ella Jenkins, which led to this audio story on the Culture desk.
Before joining The Times, Mike spent close to a decade at The New Yorker, where he helped manage the fact-checking department and was a contributing writer, publishing pieces for Talk of the Town and Tables for Two, as well as a feature that was cited by the “Best American Science and Nature Writing” series.
Please join us in giving him a warm welcome.