A Promotion for Steve Smith

In just one year, Steve Smith has become integral to Metro's coverage, guiding reporters who are on the critical beats of immigration, education and health. From ICE raids to student protests at Columbia University to the recent nurses' strike, Steve can be trusted to edit hot-button issues with fairness and care.

We would now like him to lend his news judgement to our overall coverage as a deputy who will join Metro's leadership team. A veteran of big-city newsrooms, Steve will help make the day-to-day and long-term decisions that will shape our coverage priorities, our staffing and our vision.

He is a generous colleague who brings out the best in reporters, pushing them to be first on breaking news and to go deeper on enterprise. We also enjoy listening to Steve each day. His extensive vocabulary makes him a human word-of-the-day calendar. We know his promotion will be most propitious for the Metro desk.

Nestor Ramos said: "When we were able to lure Steve from The Washington Post last year, I knew we were getting an editor with a tireless work ethic, a patient bedside manner and a fabulous wardrobe. He became indispensable on Metro almost immediately, shepherding key lines of coverage and producing great, memorable journalism with his signature sesquipedalian flair."

Steve joined The Times last February from The Post, where he was the health and science editor during the biggest health and science story of our lives, and education editor before that. Prior to The Post, he was a reporter and editor at The Boston Globe, where, as city editor, he helped run the Pulitzer-winning coverage of the Boston Marathon bombing. But Steve got his start as a reporter at The Miami Herald, which, he says, " gave me many of the tools that allow me to be here."

He starts Feb. 22. Please join us in congratulating him.

- Nikita Stewart, Dean Chang, Andrés Martinez and Judy Tong