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Changes in Sports: John Cherwa, deputy editor; Houston Mitchell, assistant editor

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Here’s the memo from Sports Editors Mike James to the staff:

I’m happy to announce two additions to the Sports staff.

John Cherwa, who was deputy sports editor to Bill Dwyre from 1990 to 1995 before leaving to become sports editor of the Chicago Tribune, is returning to The Times as deputy sports editor. John will have a variety of duties that will include developing multimedia strategies, working on investigations and projects, helping to run the daily operation of the section and directing the department in my absence.

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Many of you will remember John from his days in Southern California; he began at The Times in 1980 in the Orange County Edition, becoming sports editor there before moving downtown. He worked tirelessly through the 1984 Olympics in L.A. and was the architect of our expansive and award-winning coverage of the soccer World Cup in 1994. John is a past president of the Associated Press Sports Editors, has won several APSE awards for sections, news reporting and investigative reporting and was editor of the year at the paper in 1995. He left Chicago for the Orlando Sentinel in 2002 and, among other duties, has been the sports coordinator for Tribune papers and in charge of special projects in Orlando since then. His role as Tribune coordinator will continue to be an important one for him in L.A. We’re fortunate to get him back. And by the way, for those of you who don’t know John, the ‘w’ in his last name is pronounced as a ‘v.’

Also, Houston Mitchell, an outstanding member of the Sports copy desk since 1998, will be moving to the Sports staff as an assistant sports editor. Houston will help with web production and the creation of interactive features for the website, take over responsibility of the Fabulous Forum sports blog and assume line-editing duties as well.

Houston has worked his way up since starting at The Times in 1991 as a desk assistant and has become a reliable sounding board for reporters during his time on the copy desk. He is a creative and thoughtful editor who has been responsible for creating many of the charts that provide important added value to our stories.

John and Houston will begin their new positions the week of Aug. 30.

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