NEW YORK -- Sally Buzbee, senior vice president and executive editor of The Associated Press, was named Tuesday as executive editor of The Washington Post, succeeding the recently retired Marty Baron.
As AP's top editor since 2017, Buzbee has directed AP's journalism through the covid-19 pandemic, Donald Trump's presidency, the #MeToo movement, Brexit, protests over racial injustice and the 2020 U.S. election.
Her emphasis on live coverage of breaking news events in all formats, augmented by deep enterprise reporting, has helped yield top awards, including Pulitzer prizes in feature photography and international reporting, along with six other Pulitzer finalists.
In appointing Buzbee to one of the most high-profile jobs in journalism, Fred Ryan, the newspaper's publisher and CEO, pointed to her 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."
Buzbee previously served as the agency's Washington bureau chief, and before that was Middle East editor, among many other positions in an AP career stretching back to 1988.
At the Post, Buzbee succeeds the widely revered Baron, who had led the Post since 2013, guiding the news organization's resurgence under the ownership of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Baron retired earlier this year at age 66.
Buzbee, originally from Olathe, Kan., joined the AP as a reporter in Topeka. She was correspondent in San Diego, and then in 1995 joined the Washington bureau, where she eventually became assistant chief of bureau.
In 2004, Buzbee became AP's Middle East editor, based in Cairo, where 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.