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Portrait of Ariel Zirulnick, smiling, against a yellow background.

Ariel Zirulnick

Director of News Experimentation (she/her)

I’m the senior editor for community engagement. My job is to make sure that our journalism consistently serves and centers your needs. That means answering your questions, doing deep research into how to better serve you, and supporting producers, reporters, and editors as they seek your input on their work.

Before coming to KPCC/LAist, I worked on a global public research project studying models for building trust and sustainability in news, and before that I was the director of The New Tropic, a local media startup in my hometown of Miami. That’s where I was introduced to the joy and importance of doing with community members, rather than about them. In a previous life I was a foreign news editor and correspondent in Nairobi for The Christian Science Monitor.

I moved to Los Angeles in 2021 for this job, and I’m consistently awed by the breadth and depth of this city. Parts of it remind me a lot of my hometown of Miami – but with better weather, better tacos, and better Asian food. I’m looking forward to knowing all the freeways off the top of my head and seeing snow and the beach in the same day (I hear this is an L.A. bucket list item).

What questions do you have about Southern California?

Stories by Ariel Zirulnick

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