By Micheline Maynard
Claudia Payne, a veteran editor at The New York Times, is joining Curbing Cars.
Claudia Payne, a veteran journalist with more than 30 years experience at The New York Times, is joining the Curbing Cars journalism project. Claudia will serve as senior editor and become the first member of the Curbing Cars advisory board. We hope to announce more board members soon.
Rick Meier and I expect that Claudia will help in many ways, leading our brainstorming sessions, providing an editor’s skilled input, helping us find story ideas and essentially providing the kind of critical help that every journalist values.
Claudia has a great reputation as an entrepreneurial journalist. She was part of the team that produced the Times‘ series on global terrorism, which won a Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting in 2002.
She also created special recurring sections for the emerging subjects of personal technology, the new wealth and philanthropy, and energy. Working together, she and I developed the Business Travel section and produced the annual Cars section.
(It was this story that I wrote for Claudia that inspired the Curbing Cars project, so you could say we owe it all to her!)
She also supervised or invented coverage for such diverse topics as President Reagan’s sweeping deregulation and tax code revision; the world of fashion and lifestyles; the transformation of retailing; the new millennium, and the post-9/11 era.
Claudia was among the first editors to use digital enhancements like live on-line question-and answer sessions and Tweet ups to promote engagement. One Tweet up, on the use of digital media by museums, was supposed to last for one afternoon with a moderator, but continued on its own for months
She retired at the end of 2011 and lives in midtown Manhattan with her husband and 14-year-old shi tzu, Beavis. They have a bungalow in Long Beach, only just restored from the ravages of Superstorm Sandy. (You can read about it in this Forbes story.)
Claudia, a determined non-driver, chose Long Beach in part because of its public transportation and walkable streets.
Her husband, Robert Roden, is the wheels of the household. He was a Teamster who drove gas tank delivery trucks. He is now the proud owner of a six-speed manual 2007 Volkswagen Autobahn GTI that causes him to bemoan the end of the art of driving.
Claudia is a health nut and dedicated follower of fashion. Robert is a steak-and-beer guy who plays rock’n roll guitar. Beavis, like his cartoon namesake, is nervous and poops a lot. He eats cruelty-free boiled chicken.
I’d like to welcome Claudia to the Curbing Cars team, and I’m especially excited to see our group grow. We now have an editor who can guide us to producing really valuable journalism.
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