Editor in Chief

Ethan Toven-Lindsey is Editor in Chief at KQED, where he leads the editorial vision and strategy that keeps the Bay Area informed, entertained, and occasionally surprised by what public media can accomplish when it sets its mind to it. In this role, Ethan oversees KQED’s newsroom operations, podcast team, and radio programming, as well as our editorial standards, ensuring that the stories that matter most to Northern California audiences get told with the depth, nuance, and integrity they deserve.

Ethan is a seasoned journalism leader with more than two decades of experience in public media, particularly skilled at building editorial teams and processes that can handle everything from breaking news to year-long investigative projects. His career has taken him from the fast-paced world of daily news production to the strategic thinking required to shape how modern newsrooms serve their communities.

Before joining KQED, Ethan spent years at WBUR and NPR working on the midday news magazine Here & Now, where he served as senior managing editor. He also helped launch a media startup, Allday.com, back in the heady days of high valuations for Vox and Buzzfeed. Before that he led the editorial team at Marketplace.

Earlier in his career, Ethan’s work as a correspondent for Oregon Public Broadcasting earned him a Peabody Award in 2009 for Hard Times, a year-long project that documented how ordinary people were navigating the financial crisis. The project taught him that the best journalism happens when you listen carefully to how people are actually living their lives, not just how experts think they should be living them.

Ethan holds a Bachelor’s degree in English Literature from UC Berkeley, class of 2000, which means he has strong opinions about the Oxford comma (he’s pro, obviously). When he’s not editing stories that help make sense of our complicated world, he’s probably on the Berkeley campus or at a Cal sporting event with his wife and two kids.