Washington Post hires AP’s Buzbee as executive editor

Sally Buzbee, executive editor and senior vice president of The Associated Press, has been named the new executive editor of The Washington Post, the paper reported on Tuesday.

Buzbee will become the first woman to lead the Post’s newsroom when she begins work next month, replacing former executive editor Martin Baron, who retired in February.

The announcement of Buzbee’s hire comes as several major newsrooms across the country are undergoing management reshuffles. The Los Angeles Times named ESPN’s Kevin Merida as its executive editor last week.

Other outlets that were seeking or are still searching for new leadership in recent months include ABC News, CBS News, HuffPost, Reuters and Vox. Dean Baquet, executive editor of The New York Times, is also expected to step down in the near future.

Buzbee inherits a media organization that earned 10 Pulitzer Prizes under Baron, the former Boston Globe editor who revitalized the Post’s newsroom after his 2012 hiring and bolstered its coverage of former President Donald Trump’s administration.

Crucial to the Post’s renaissance in recent years was the purchase of the paper in 2013 by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, whose investments helped facilitate an expansion of the newsroom to nearly 1,000 journalists and enabled the Post to flourish despite dire trends in the broader newspaper business.

The selection of Buzbee caps a 10-week search for Baron’s successor. She has been with the AP since the start of her journalism career in 1988, according to the Post, and previously served as the organization’s Washington bureau chief before ascending to the top editor role.

Post publisher Fred Ryan announced Buzbee’s appointment to newsroom employees in a staffwide memo on Tuesday, the Post reported, describing her as “an inspiring leader and accomplished journalist in the finest traditions” of the venerable Washington paper.

In an interview with the Post, Buzbee said the paper “has such a rich journalistic legacy and such a terrific staff,” adding that it would be “an honor” to serve as the newsroom’s first female executive editor.

“I’ve always been conscious in my career and my life how others have paved the way for me,” she said. “I’m incredibly grateful for that. I’m also conscious of the fact that we can never rest on the issue of diversity. My feeling is, no matter how much progress we’ve made, it’s never enough.”