Washington Post Names AP’s Sally Buzbee as New Top Editor

(Bloomberg) -- The Washington Post named Sally Buzbee as its new executive editor, appointing a longtime Associated Press journalist -- and the first woman -- to lead its growing newsroom.

Buzbee, 55, has been executive editor and senior vice president of the Associated Press since 2017. Before that, she served as the news agency’s Washington bureau chief from 2010 through 2016. She had also been the AP’s Middle East regional editor.

During her tenure, the AP won a 2019 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting and was a finalist for that year’s Pulitzer Prize for national reporting.

“Sally Buzbee has an exceptional record of achievement and a tremendous wealth of experience in leading a global news organization,” Washington Post Publisher Fred Ryan said in a statement. “In an extensive search that included many of the best journalists in America, Sally stood out as the right person to lead the Post going forward.”

Buzbee will start June 1, succeeding longtime newsroom boss Marty Baron, 66, who left the Post at the end of February. She’ll lead one of America’s most prestigious newspapers at a time when the industry is trying to diversify its ranks and betting its future more on digital subscriptions and less on advertising revenue.

She will be the first woman to lead the Post in its 144-year history.

Her appointment marks the latest big change at the top of a major newspaper. The Los Angeles Times recently hired Kevin Merida as its next executive editor. Merida, who most recently oversaw coverage of race, culture and sports as head of ESPN’s site the Undefeated, spent about two decades at the Washington Post.

The Post has expanded quickly under the ownership of billionaire Jeff Bezos. During Baron’s tenure, which began shortly before Bezos bought the paper, the Post’s newsroom grew to more than 1,000 journalists from 580.

Bezos, the second-richest person in the world, acquired the newspaper for $250 million in 2013, betting he could revive the struggling institution famed for its coverage of the Watergate scandal.

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