Jim Amoss

Walter James Amoss III (born October 22, 1947) is former editor of The Times-Picayune. Under his leadership and that of the publisher, Ashton Phelps Jr., the paper won two Pulitzer Prizes in 1997 for public service and editorial cartooning, and in 2006 won two more Pulitzer Prizes for its coverage of Hurricane Katrina.

Amoss is a native of New Orleans, Louisiana. His family lived abroad in Germany and Belgium for many years during his childhood. He attended Gymnasium Barkof in Bremen, Germany. He returned to New Orleans for his junior year of high school, graduating from Jesuit High School (1965).

He graduated magna cum laude from Yale University (1969), where he majored in German literature. He studied at the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, specializing in German literature and the work of Thomas Mann.

After completing his studies during the Vietnam War, Amoss applied for conscientious objector status. Granted the designation, he worked as an orderly in Boston City Hospital. Upon returning to New Orleans two years later, Amoss enrolled in a night course at Loyola University New Orleans on the basics of journalism.

He began his journalism career in 1974 as an intern, and later a reporter, with the city's afternoon daily, The States-Item. His reporting included several investigations with reporting partner Dean Baquet, including one into organized crime kingpin Carlos Marcello.

After the merger of The States-Item with The Times-Picayune in 1980, Amoss was named bureau chief in St. Bernard Parish before he became city editor in 1982, then metro editor in 1983 and associate editor in 1988. He was named editor of The Times-Picayune in July 1990. He was offered the position in the spring of 1990, after he had accepted a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University; he declined the fellowship. In October 2012, he added the title of vice president of content for NOLA Media Group, a new company composed of the newspaper and its affiliate website, NOLA.com.

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