Washington Post appoints Santos and Whalen as contributing opinion columnists

The following excerpt announcement was sent out from The Washington Post:

The Washington Post today announced Fernanda Santos and Bill Whalen will join the Opinions section as contributing columnists, joining an expanding roster of Post columnists stationed around the nation. Based in Phoenix, Santos will provide commentary on issues ranging from immigration to Southwest politics and more. Based in Palo Alto, Calif., Whalen will provide commentary on California politics, tech and more.

Santos has reported in three languages, in Latin America and across the U.S., on issues ranging from politics, policy, criminal justice, immigration and more. She began her journalism career in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and is now a full-time professor at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University teaching narrative writing and bilingual reporting. Previously, she spent twelve years at The New York Times, including five as its Phoenix bureau chief. Santos is a recipient of the Kiplinger, International Reporting Project and Casey Children and Family fellowships; author of “The Fire Line: The Story of the Granite Mountain Hotshots,” about one of the deadliest wildfires in U.S. history; and a member of the faculty of the Poynter Institute’s Power of Diverse Voices seminar. She is also a board member of the Arizona Latino Media Association.

Whalen is a Hoover Institution research fellow and the Virginia Hobbs Carpenter Fellow in Journalism. He writes and comments on campaigns, elections and governance with an emphasis on California and America’s political landscapes. Before moving to California, Whalen was a political correspondent for Insight Magazine, the national newsweekly and sister publication of the Washington Times, where he was honored for his profiles and analysis of candidates, campaigns, Congress and the White House. Whalen is a native of Arlington, Va. and held his first job delivering newspapers for The Post as a teen.