Dean Baquet, who has led The New York Times newsroom since 2014, has won the Benjamin C. Bradlee Editor of the Year Award from the National Press Foundation.

The prestigious award is given for imagination, professional skill, ethics and an ability to motivate staff— qualities that helped Baquet, who learned his interviewing skills growing up in the back of his family’s restaurant in New Orleans, become one of the most admired editors in the United States. He was forced out of his job as editor of the Los Angeles Times in 2006 after defying orders to cut reporters’ jobs. He then became the first Black journalist to serve as Executive Editor of The New York Times.

His trademark advice when sending reporters off on assignment: “Be good.”

Baquet accepted the award at the National Press Foundation’s annual awards dinner on May 4, 2022, at the Marriott Marquis hotel in Washington D.C.

The National Press Foundation judges cited Baquet’s lifetime editorial achievements – he shared a Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Journalism at the Chicago Tribune in 1988 and led The New York Times to win 17 more Pulitzers, among other honors.

Judges also noted Baquet’s success in expanding the scope of the newspaper’s editorial offerings while the company was transitioning from an advertising-based paper product to a predominantly subscription-supported digital news organization.  As of November, The Times boasted nearly 8.4 million subscribers, 7.6 million of them digital.

“No editor in America has navigated so many swirling challenges, or so well, as Dean Baquet,” said NPF judge and board member Tom Rosenstiel. “On his watch, his newsroom has become thoroughly digital, reinvented its story telling, introduced new products, transformed its business model, contended with cultural reckoning in its newsroom, covered the pandemic, navigated a war on facts and the rise of an autocratic movement within one of the major political parties, and served as a beacon for journalists in troubled times.”

“If facts save lives, the Times under Baquet is the proof,” Rosenstiel said.