The Washington Post named veteran Sally Buzbee of the Associated Press as its executive editor, marking the first time a woman has been appointed to lead the 143-year-old news organization.
Buzbee, 55, succeeds the retired Marty Baron in one of the most celebrated jobs in journalism, the same role held by the legendary Ben Bradlee when the Post helped break the Watergate scandal in the 1970s.
During her extraordinary career, Buzbee has been with the AP since 1988 in jobs that included Washington bureau chief, and has been its senior vice president and executive editor since 2017.
In an interview, Buzbee stressed her commitment to persity and to telling stories in a compelling way across many formats.
“The challenge of journalism everywhere is to meet audiences where they are and make our journalism as accessible and sharp and transparent as possible,” she said. “The Post has an extraordinary team that is in many ways on the cutting edge of figuring out how to do this.”
The post's publisher and CEO Fred Ryan pointed to her impressive achievements and experience in leading a global news organization.
“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,” Ryan said.
“She is widely admired for her absolute integrity, boundless energy and dedication to the essential role journalism plays in safeguarding our democracy,” he added.
Buzbee directed AP’s journalism through the COVID-19 pandemic, Trump’s presidency, the #MeToo movement, Brexit and protests over racial injustice. She emphasized breaking news in all formats and deepened the AP’s enterprise and investigative efforts.
Under her leadership, the AP won Pulitzer Prizes in feature photography and international reporting, in addition to six other Pulitzer finalists.
In 2004, she became AP’s Middle East editor, based in Cairo, in which she led coverage of the war in Iraq, the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, the Darfur crisis and the growth of terrorist cells in Saudi Arabia, Yemen and elsewhere.
In 2010, she was promoted to deputy managing editor at the agency’s New York headquarters and led the founding of the Nerve Center, AP’s now-integral hub for global news coordination and customer communication.
Later that year, she was named chief of the Washington bureau, where she oversaw coverage of the 2012 and 2016 presidential elections, the White House, Congress, the Pentagon and the bureau’s polling and investigative teams.
“AP is one of the most important news organizations in the whole world and it has truly been the complete honor and joy of my life to be connected to it,” she stressed. “I have learned so much and I am truly grateful for every single day I’ve spent at the AP.”
Gary Pruitt, AP president and CEO, asserted that the Journalist has been “an exceptional leader” and while her hiring by the Post is bittersweet news, it also reflects well on the organization she left behind.
“It shows the AP is operating at the absolute highest levels of journalism,” Pruitt said.
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