Dean Baquet: From Eddie's Restaurant to Running the New York Times

The Seventh Ward Kid Who Ran the New York Times

Dean Paul Baquet was born on September 21, 1956, in New Orleans, the son of Eddie Baquet Sr., the owner of Eddie's Restaurant — a Creole soul food institution in the Seventh Ward that served fried chicken, stuffed peppers, and red beans and rice to the neighborhood for decades. Dean grew up in the restaurant, in the neighborhood, and in a Creole community that valued education, hard work, and storytelling. He would take the storytelling part and run with it all the way to the top of American journalism.

The Rise

Baquet started as a reporter at the States-Item in New Orleans, then moved to the Chicago Tribune, where he won the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting in 1988 for a series on corruption in the Chicago City Council. He was just 31 years old — one of the youngest Pulitzer winners in the prize's history.

From there, Baquet moved to the New York Times as a national reporter, then returned to the Los Angeles Times as managing editor and eventually editor. His tenure at the LA Times was marked by a famous clash with the Tribune Company, the paper's corporate owner, over budget cuts that Baquet believed would destroy the newsroom. He was fired for refusing to make the cuts — a principled stand that earned him the admiration of journalists across the country.

The New York Times

In 2014, Baquet was named executive editor of the New York Times — the most powerful position in American journalism. He was the first African American to hold the job, and he held it during one of the most turbulent periods in the history of the press. He led the paper through the Trump era, the pandemic, the racial reckoning of 2020, and the ongoing transformation of the news industry from print to digital.

Under Baquet, the Times won eighteen Pulitzer Prizes. The newsroom expanded. The paper's digital subscription model became the gold standard for the industry. And through it all, Baquet maintained the editorial standards and journalistic values that had defined the paper for over a century.

Eddie's Son

Baquet has never been shy about his New Orleans identity. He talks about the Seventh Ward, about Eddie's Restaurant, about the Creole community that shaped him. His brother Eddie Baquet Jr. continued to run the family restaurant until Hurricane Katrina forced its closure. The restaurant's legacy — feeding the neighborhood, serving as a gathering place, being part of the community fabric — is the same legacy that Baquet brought to journalism: the idea that the institution serves the people, not the other way around.

The kid from Eddie's Restaurant in the Seventh Ward ran the most important newspaper in the world. He did it with the values he learned in New Orleans — tell the truth, feed the people, show up every day. The Creole kid made good, and he never forgot where the good came from.