Walter Baranger is a full-time lecturer and the faculty newsroom advisor for the Daily Titan, Cal State Fullerton’s independent student newspaper and web site.

While attending Cal State Fullerton in the 1980s, Baranger was a reporter and managing editor for the Daily Titan.

He retired from The New York Times in 2016 as senior editor for news operations and had been an editor, columnist and reporter in Southern California at The San Diego Union, The Evening Tribune in San Diego, and the Press-Enterprise in Riverside. Baranger's first major story was the arrival of President Nixon in Orange County after his resignation in the Watergate scandal.

While at The Times, Baranger covered 13 wars and revolts, major hurricanes, the 9/11 attacks, the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, President Clinton’s impeachment and Senate trial, summer and winter Olympics, political conventions and presidential inaugurations. He made frequent visits to Times bureaus around the world, and by his 2016 retirement, he had flown 3 million miles and had worked in more than 65 countries.

During his tenure, The New York Times newsroom won nearly 60 Pulitzer Prizes.

Baranger comes from a family of journalists: His paternal grandfather was CBS News’s correspondent in Tokyo at the outbreak of World War II, and his maternal grandfather covered the 1916 World Series for The Boston Record. He volunteers with the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary and in 2017 edited its magazine, Navigator, for which he earned the Coast Guard’s Meritorious Team Commendation.