New Editor on Metro Desk

The Metro desk has become a destination for deeply reported narratives and delightful, boundary-pushing enterprise. Maintaining that distinction requires an editor adept at features who loves the craft of writing and has the ability to elevate copy. We also searched for an editor with a nose for news and the adroitness to help reporters find and tell a story from all angles.

We are delighted to announce that we have found these skills in Steve Kolowich, a former features editor on the style desk at The Washington Post. He spent seven years editing a variety of features and criticism for the desk. During the pandemic, he helped shape its coverage of life in the limbo of semi-quarantine, and he ran the desk's political coverage, editing stories about people who had power or were trying to get it.

He edited a series of columns by Monica Hesse that was selected as a finalist for the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary, and an epic by Dan Zak that was a finalist for the 2025 National Magazine Award in Feature Writing. His writers' work has also received honors from the Society for Features Journalism.

"Steve is the best combination of big picture and precision. He's an expert at working with writers to shape a story's vision and then ensuring every single sentence reaches its full potential," said David Malitz, deputy editor on the Culture desk at The Times, who worked with Steve at The Post.

Working as a reporter before he went into editing, Steve had a sophisticated scrappiness. He rose f rom being a technology reporter at Inside Higher Ed to a senior writer at the Chronicle of Higher Education, where he reported on college campuses as political battlegrounds, among other topics. His collaboration with This American Life, "My Effing First Amendment," won an award for audio storytelling from the Education Writers Association.

Steve describes himself as "a New Yorker by marriage." But having grown up in New England, he admits to retaining "an array of problematic sports allegiances."

He's a songwriter in his spare time, and he said he also plays pickup basketball and tries to convince his wife and daughter that his jokes are funny.

Steve starts on April 27. Please join us in welcoming him to The Times.

- Nikita, Steve, Dean and Andrés