Blake Hounshell, ‘On Politics’ Editor at The Times, Dies at 44

He was managing editor of Foreign Policy magazine and a top editor at Politico before overseeing The Times’s popular political newsletter.

Blake Hounshell wearing a blazer and sitting while looking away from the camera.
Blake Hounshell in 2021, the year he was hired by The Times to oversee its “On Politics” newsletter. He had had 15 years’ experience launching, editing and writing online blogs and newsletters.

Blake Hounshell, an influential political journalist who was managing editor of Foreign Policy magazine and a top editor at Politico before joining The New York Times and overseeing its popular newsletter “On Politics,” died on Tuesday in Washington. He was 44.

His family said in a statement that he had died “after a long and courageous battle with depression.” The police in Washington were investigating the death as a suicide, a police official said.

Mr. Hounshell, who joined The Times in 2021, wrote “On Politics” out of Washington, incorporating contributions from other Times correspondents. The newsletter appears five days a week and is regularly read by an estimated half-million paying subscribers.

Mr. Hounshell “quickly distinguished himself as our lead politics newsletter writer and a gifted observer of our country’s political scene,” Joseph Kahn, the Times’s executive editor, said in a memo to the staff, adding, “He became an indispensable and always insightful voice in the report during a busy election cycle.”