Minnesota editor returning to New Orleans

NEW ORLEANS — The editor of Louisiana’s largest newspaper is retiring, and the new editor is a returning New Orleans native who comes to the job after heading the biggest newspaper in Minnesota.

Rene Sanchez of the Star Tribune of Minneapolis will replace Peter Kovacs as editor of the The Times-Picayune, The Advocate and NOLA.com, the locally owned Louisiana media outlet announced Thursday.

Sanchez has been editor of the Star Tribune for eight years and led it to Pulitzer Prizes in 2013 and in 2021. The 2021 award was for its coverage of George Floyd’s murder, while the 2013 award was for its investigation of child deaths in poorly regulated day care homes.

Kovacs and Sanchez worked near each other decades ago when Kovacs was city editor of The Times-Picayune and Sanchez clerked in the sports department.

Kovacs was ousted as The Times-Picayune managing editor in 2012, when its New York-based owner laid off staff and reduced the number of days it printed. When Dathel and John Georges bought the Baton Rouge-based Advocate in 2013, they hired Kovacs and expanded into New Orleans.

Under Kovacs, the newspaper won its first Pulitzer in 2019 for coverage of Louisiana laws allowing criminal convictions by divided juries.

Kovacs said his nine years as editor have been the most rewarding of his professional life, but noted that he will turn 66 this month.

“I wanted to step away when our company is strong and stable, which it is now,” he said, according to the newspaper.

Two weeks after The Advocate’s Pulitzer announcement, the Georges bought The TimesPicayune and NOLA.com. The company also publishes The Acadiana Advocate, based in Lafayette, and has a bureau in Lake Charles, in the state’s southwestern corner.

Both The Advocate and the Star Tribune are locally owned.