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Julie Makinen, a veteran news executive who was inspired to pursue a career in journalism after interning at the Palo Alto Weekly while attending Stanford 30 years ago, will become the CEO and publisher of the Voice and Weekly’s parent nonprofit Embarcadero Media Foundation, foundation board chair Bill Johnson announced today.
Makinen has a long career in journalism, including work for local digital and print news organizations as well as writing and editing for some of the country’s most prestigious news outlets. She will start at Embarcadero on Oct. 19.
Over three decades, Makinen has worked as a reporter, editor and executive editor at some of the country’s most respected news outlets, including the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and International New York Times. Most recently, Makinen was the editor-in-chief of the San Francisco Standard, a digital local news start-up.
Makinen has a long connection with the Midpeninsula. She earned a bachelor’s degree in human biology at Stanford before getting a master’s degree in East Asian Studies from UCLA. Her parents reside in Palo Alto and her father served on Palo Alto’s Historic Resources Board for more than 20 years.
Makinen returned to Stanford in 2016 as a JSK Journalism Fellow and stayed a second year to work at the Stanford Graduate School of Business’ Center for Entrepreneurial Studies as a case writer.
In 2018, she was named executive editor of the Desert Sun newspaper in Palm Springs, a position that included oversight of all nine Gannett publications in California. She helped negotiate the first labor agreement with editorial employees at the paper, adopted in 2024.
While leading the Desert Sun, Makinen also co-founded the Coachella Valley Journalism Foundation, which raises money to support local journalism through grantmaking to multiple news outlets in the desert region. She has also been active in the statewide journalism community for many years. In 2024, she served as board chair of the California News Publishers Association.
Makinen began her career working for the metro and foreign desks of The Washington Post. In 2001, she joined the Los Angeles Times, where over eight years she worked as deputy business editor and assistant foreign editor. She took that experience abroad, working in Hong Kong as deputy business editor for the international edition of the New York Times. After returning to the L.A. Times for a three-year stint as film editor, she returned to Asia to be the L.A. Times’ China bureau chief, based in Beijing. Her foreign reporting included bylines from Iraq, Afghanistan, North Korea, China, Japan and other Asian countries.
“Although my newspaper career took me around the world, local journalism is where I have found my greatest sense of meaning and connection,” Makinen said. “At the Desert Sun, I relished helping residents understand not only what was happening, but why it mattered. Local news helps foster civic participation and provides a common foundation of facts in an increasingly fragmented information environment,” she said.
Bill Johnson, Embarcadero founder and chairman of the board of directors, said that Makinen brings a unique combination of local knowledge, diverse experience at all levels of journalism, strong leadership experience and a passion for deepening the relationship between journalism and the communities it serves.
“Julie understands that our role is not only to accurately present the news, but to help readers engage with each other and better understand the diversity of our community and issues affecting the quality of life for residents,” Johnson said. “Her fundraising experience as the co-founder of a nonprofit journalism foundation will enable her to hit the ground running in support of our own conversion to nonprofit two years ago,” he said.
Makinen is keenly aware of the challenges facing local journalism.
“This is an exhilarating—and daunting—time for journalism,” she said. “Rapid technological and social change is transforming how people find information, whom they trust and how news organizations connect with their communities. But I believe deeply that the need for ambitious, independent and genuinely local journalism has never been greater.”
Embarcadero’s transition to nonprofit ownership, she added, “creates an opportunity not only to preserve a strong journalistic legacy, but also to imagine what a thriving, community-supported news organization can become. And I can think of few places better suited to that work than the communities where we publish, with their extraordinary concentration of civic, philanthropic, academic and technological resources—and neighbors that care deeply about the places they call home.”
Makinen will succeed Adam Dawes at the helm. Dawes, who announced in April he would be leaving when his replacement was found, served as CEO for four years. He focused on modernizing and building a sustainable company, ushering in a host of technological and organizational improvements including the transition to its current 501(c)3 nonprofit status and two straight years of profitability after three years of losses following the COVID crisis.
Makinen will be responsible for all aspects of operations at seven Bay Area publications published by Embarcadero Media Foundation, including the Palo Alto Weekly and Palo Alto Online, The Almanac, the Mountain View Voice, the Redwood City Pulse, the Pleasanton Weekly, the Livermore Vine and DanvilleSanRamon.com.
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