NY Times taps Romero for Mexico City

New York Times international editor Phil Pan sent out the following:

As the Mexico City bureau continues to pursue ambitious stories and expansive coverage of the region, we’re thrilled to announce that Simon Romero will be joining the team as a correspondent.

Working alongside Natalie Kitroeff and Maria Abi-Habib, Simon will tackle the region’s most crucial issues, including migration, climate change, rising violence and Mexico’s 2024 presidential election.

Simon is no stranger to the International desk, having served as both the Andes bureau chief and Brazil bureau chief. During his postings in South America, he covered life inside a Venezuelan prison run by gun-toting inmates, river pirates in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest, the rise of Hugo Chávez’s political movement, the atrocities of Colombia’s long internal war and went inside remote Russian, Chinese and Chilean bases to describe the race for Antarctica’s resources. He is a recipient of the Maria Moors Cabot prize for his coverage of Latin America.

“This is really a homecoming for Simon,” said Greg Winter, international managing editor. “He was a great correspondent before, and we’re thrilled that he’s coming back to take on an entirely new part of the hemisphere.”

Fluent in Spanish and Portuguese, he joined The Times in 1999 in São Paulo to cover Brazil’s economy and went on to become the paper’s international energy correspondent, based in Houston.

Since 2017, Simon has worked as a national correspondent based in Albuquerque, traveling widely around the country. Simon has written about the Mexican immigrant elected as Arizona’s first and only Latino governor, the awe-inspiring eruption of Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano, the Cherokee Nation’s push for a seat in Congress and wildfires in the Alaskan tundra. He even found time to track down a conquistador statue’s stolen foot, a source of long-simmering tensions in New Mexico between Hispanics and Native Americans.

Born in Albuquerque and raised in rural northern New Mexico, Simon attended public schools in Las Vegas, N.M., and graduated with honors from Harvard. He enjoys learning about native plants and going on long hikes and road trips with his family.