Expanding our 24/7 Live Team | The New York Times Company

Six new journalists have joined the Live team in London and Seoul to cover even more stories in real-time, no matter the hour. Read more in this note from Marc Lacey and Michael Slackman.

All,

Big stories have no bedtimes.

Take the coronavirus, which The New York Times began covering nearly three years ago as a live briefing and has continued to track day after day, and night after night, ever since. Our live coverage is launched anew every day and passed among our three major newsrooms in New York, London and Seoul, attracting a huge readership around the globe.

And it is not just the pandemic that receives such treatment. The fall of Afghanistan was another round-the-clock story. The snowstorm that buried much of the Northeast of the United States at the end of January was similarly handed off from hub to hub to hub. Same with election results, mass shootings, volcanic eruptions, coups.

To cover even more stories in real-time, no matter the hour or where they happen to break out, we’re beefing up our Live team overseas. Live coverage is owned by all of our journalists – on the International desk, the Express desk, and throughout the rest of our expansive organization. But we expect the reinforcements we are putting in place in London and Seoul to help us seize even more big news moments, to experiment with going live in exciting new ways, and to ensure that our live coverage is as dynamic and authoritative as the rest of our report.

In London, where Jim Yardley has assembled a stellar team that covers some of the biggest global stories, from Syria to Ukraine, Shashank Bengali has established himself as a key evangelist for Live. Joining the team this month are two newcomers with extensive experience covering big stories around the world: Matt Surman, who will be a Live editor, and Matt Bigg, who will be a London-based Live correspondent.

As part of an effort to boost the number of visual editors outside of New York, as well as increase the visual storytelling in our live coverage, we’re also welcoming Sarah Eckinger as a London-based photo editor. She has done stints in New York on International, National, Express, and Home.

In Seoul, where Adrienne Carter’s dynamic operation covers the world while much of the U.S. sleeps, our Live operation will be overseen by Andrés Martínez, who has been a standout editor and correspondent on Live in New York. In his first year at The Times, Andrés has established himself as a key partner of desks across the newsroom by jumping on stories ranging from the Chauvin verdict to the fall of Kabul to the recent snowstorm on the East Coast. He also filled in temporarily in Seoul, which led to his new posting. Reporting to Andrés as a correspondent in Seoul will be Victoria Kim, a veteran journalist whose reporting and writing chops will elevate our report.

Expect more announcements to come. With live journalism constantly evolving, and our ambitions for it only growing, Live, like the news itself, will never sleep.

– Marc Lacey and Michael Slackman

Here is more on the new additions to our London and Seoul newsrooms, announced in live briefing style, of course:

Live Updates: Our Team Is Expanding in London and Seoul

Covering the news as it is breaking has become an integral part of what Times readers expect. Here are some of the new journalists in London and Seoul who are going to work with desks across the newsroom to take our already strong live coverage to the next level.

Atlanta, Accra, and many stops in between for Matt B.

Joining the Live team as a Live correspondent based in London is Matthew Mpoke Bigg. As a veteran journalist for Reuters, Matt has been posted around the world, in Nairobi, Abidjan, Atlanta, Jakarta and Accra. He was part of a Reuters team that won a Loeb prize for an investigation into U.S. shell companies. Since 2019, he has delved into an array of international issues while working for UNHCR, the U.N. Refugee Agency. The number of big stories he has covered over the years is too long to list but one he remembers well is the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, where he crossed paths with a large contingent from The Times.

Exploding toads? Yes, Matt S. has covered it all.

Joining the Live team in London as an editor will be Matt Surman, who has spent more than two decades as a journalist. Matt has reported and edited stories about war, terrorism, political campaigns, and economics–as well as royalty, pop culture and, once, “exploding” toads at a Hamburg pond. Most recently, as the weekend editor at The Wall Street Journal, he has spent much of his career in international news, particularly focused on Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Before that, he worked at the Los Angeles Times and the Associated Press. As a self-professed “Air Force brat,” Matt spent his childhood on and around military bases in the U.S. and South Korea, but considers the Seattle area home. Currently based in London, he enjoys “aimless walks around the city and a good pub pint.”

Mount climbing? Karaoke? Writing with verve? Welcome Victoria.

Graceful writing? Deep knowledge of Asia? Calm under pressure? Victoria Kim, a new Live correspondent in Seoul, will bring all that and more to her new position. Victoria joins us from the Los Angeles Times, where she was the Seoul correspondent covering summits, elections and missile launches but also writing profiles of a rural bus driver and a female octogenarian barber. Previously, she spent about a decade as a Metro reporter at the L.A. Times, covering state and federal courts, writing feature stories about immigrant communities, and working on a number of investigative projects on topics ranging from jails to the Catholic Church. A native of Seoul, Victoria is an avid hiker who spends many weekends scaling the country’s steep mountains.

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