Sewell Chan

Sewell Chan is an American journalist who is the editor-in-chief of The Texas Tribune. Prior to that he was the editorial page editor at the Los Angeles Times, where he oversaw the editorial board and the Op-Ed and Sunday Opinion pages of the newspaper. Chan also worked at The New York Times from 2004 to 2018.

Early life and education
Chan, the son of immigrants from China and Hong Kong, grew up in Flushing, Queens and attended New York City public schools and Hunter College High School, where he was the co-editor of the school's independent newspaper, The Observer. His father was a taxi cab driver. He graduated from Harvard University with an AB in Social Studies in 1998 and received a Marshall Scholarship for graduate study at Oxford University. He received his MPhil in Politics in 2000.

Career
From 2000 to 2004, Chan wrote for The Washington Post, where he covered municipal politics, poverty and social services, and education.

Chan moved to The New York Times in 2004. In January 2010, Chan joined The Times's Washington bureau as a correspondent covering economic policy.

In February 2011, Chan was named a deputy editor of the Times Op-Ed page and Sunday Review section.

From 2015 to 2018, Chan was an International News Editor at The New York Times.

In August 2018, the Los Angeles Times named Chan a deputy managing editor to "supervise a team of journalists responsible for initiating coverage and developing content for its digital, video and print platforms."

In April 2020, Chan was promoted to an editorial page editor, in charge of overseeing the editorial and op-ed pages. He was the lead author of a 2020 editorial examining the Los Angeles Times' fraught history with communities of color and journalists of color and apologizing for the newspaper's history of racism. After Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, Chan faced criticism for publishing a full page of letters devoted to Californians who had voted for Trump.

Chan was named The Texas Tribune Editor-in-Chief effective October 2021.

In 2024, Chan served as a judge for that year's American Mosaic Journalism Prize.