Patrick LaForge | The New York Times
We have some great news: Victor Mather will be moving from Sports to the Express Team in September.
This is a match eight years in the making. That’s how long the Express Team has been ramping up the newsroom’s metabolism on breaking and trending news, while growing from a small group you could count on one hand to a global operation working around the clock in New York, London, Seoul and other assorted cities. Around the same time in 2015, Victor started a similar mission on Sports, waking up at the crack of dawn to scour the competition. We’ve sometimes collaborated, as with this obituary sidebar he wrote with Katie Rogers — before she went off to Washington to cover the White House — about Yogi Berra’s many mangled quotations.
“When you come to a fork in the road, take it,” Berra once said. The words may be confusing, but the spirit applies here.
Express is poised to grow its mission in the coming months. From his new perch with us, we expect Victor will use his invaluable experience to keep The Times competitive on breaking sports news while expanding his reporting to many other audience-pleasing topics. We’ll also lean on his editing expertise from 24 years in the newsroom, including stints on National and Metro, where he worked closely with our night editor, Pete Khoury.
“Victor is among the most versatile journalists at The Times,” Pete said. “He can do anything.”
Victor has reported breaking stories in dozens of sports — not just baseball, basketball and football, but cricket, fencing, darts and snooker. He would often out-Express Express. On many mornings, we would spot a great breaking or viral story only to learn he was writing or had already filed. Over the years, he has also written about the opera, lexicology, cruciverbalism, dog shows, the color blue and the proper recipe for an Arnold Palmer (the iced tea should dominate the flavor). Before The Times, he worked for a variety of publications, including a crossword puzzle magazine (see, “cruciverbalism,” above), a news service for libraries and two different horse-racing newspapers.
Along the way, Victor has set some records. He has been to five Olympics for The Times. In 2016, he consulted a Carnegie Mellon professor to optimize how many Olympic events he could attend and cover in a single day. He made it to 13.
It will be hard to top that, but I’m sure he’ll try — and have fun doing it. He’ll be right at home with the vast range of stories we help cover, whether the skies are orange from wildfire smoke, the Supreme Court is rewriting the rules of the country or moviegoers are enthralled by the next Barbenheimer.
Please congratulate Victor and welcome him into the fold.