Washington Post names O’Grady its Cairo bureau chief

Washington Post foreign editor Douglas Jehl, deputy foreign editor Eva Rodriguez and Middle East editor Alan Sipress sent out the following on Tuesday:

We’re thrilled to announce that Siobhán O’Grady will become Cairo bureau chief early next year.

Siobhán, who has extensive experience reporting from difficult places, brings energy, versatility, an original eye and a confident voice to the role. Her responsibilities in the heart of the Arab world will stretch from Yemen to Morocco, a region of 225 million people, and she is committed to covering not just politics and policy, but people — the “rebels and autocrats, jailed journalists and pioneering artists, human smugglers and arms dealers, desperate migrants and gender equality reformers, ambitious scientists and struggling farmers,” as she described them in a memo.

Since joining The Post in 2018, Siobhán has demonstrated a knack for bringing characters to life, even against daunting obstacles. She has delivered memorable work from everywhere she has traveled: from Central Africa, reporting on a divide between English- and French-speakers that threatens to tear Cameroon apart; from Afghanistan, during three fill-in tours, reporting on the race to preserve a remarkable film archive from the country’s pre-Taliban past; and from Lebanon, where she told the story of last summer’s devastating explosion through the eyes of a baker who “owes his life to the humble manousheh,” the irresistible Levantine flatbread. As a newsroom-based staff writer in Foreign, Siobhán has excelled in a breaking-news mission that prioritizes quick-turn explainers and other stories that fill gaps in our overseas coverage. Since February, from Washington and Hong Kong, she has been a pillar of our round-the-clock coronavirus coverage.
She is a graduate of Dickinson College and studied abroad in Morocco and Cameroon. Siobhán began her career at Foreign Policy, then spent 18 months freelancing across Africa from Nigeria, Togo, Uganda, Kenya, Ghana and elsewhere for the Los Angeles Times, the Atlantic and other news outlets. She speaks fluent French and elementary Arabic.

In Cairo, Siobhán will join a Middle East team that includes Post correspondents in Baghdad, Beirut, Istanbul and Jerusalem.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.