Mark Lorando

Mark Lorando, (born April 4, 1963) is editor and vice president of content of The Times-Picayune and its affiliate website, NOLA.com. He succeeded longtime Times-Picayune editor Jim Amoss in September 2015.

Lorando was born in Portsmouth, Virginia, and moved with his family to the New Orleans, Louisiana, area as a teenager. He is a graduate of Brother Martin High School (1981) and attended Loyola University New Orleans. He is a longtime resident of Mandeville, Louisiana.

Lorando began his newspaper career in 1981 as a clerk for The Times-Picayune’s television guide, TV Focus. From 1984 to 2000, he was a television columnist for The Times-Picayune and editor of TV Focus.

In 2000, Lorando was named Living section editor, overseeing the daily features sections of the newspaper. In 2009, he became Features editor, with added responsibility for The Times-Picayune’s weekly sections for entertainment, home and garden, and travel and a monthly upscale shopping guide. He replaced James O'Byrne, who became director of content for NOLA.com.

During the next few years, under Lorando, the Features staff was an early adopter of the practice of posting articles to the NOLA.com website before they appeared in print in The Times-Picayune, contrary to the newsroom’s habit at the time. The “digital first” approach was encouraged by owner of the newspaper and website, Advance Publications, which in late 2011 launched a dramatic transition to that model at its newspapers in Michigan. A similar transition was launched at The Times-Picayune in 2012.

In the spring of 2012, Lorando was absent from the newsroom without explanation for two weeks. “Staffers presumed he was in Ann Arbor [Michigan], studying what came to be known as the ‘Michigan Model,’ because a garish and widely panned redesign of NOLA.com clearly modeled after MLive.com launched while he was gone, and the mysterious ‘Rapture’ meetings of a half-dozen senior editors began immediately upon his return.”

Those secret planning meetings prefaced the May 24, 2012, announcement by Amoss that The Times-Picayune would formally switch on October 1 to a digital-first approach, emphasizing NOLA.com and reducing its days of print publication, under a newly formed company, NOLA Media Group.

In August, Lorando was named Director of Metro Content effective October 1, reporting to Amoss and supervising news, entertainment, and photography and videography coverage throughout metropolitan New Orleans.

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