Washington Post names Shih its India bureau chief

Gerry Shih

Washington Post foreign editor Douglas Jehl, deputy foreign editor Eva Rodriguez, and South Asia and Africa editor Jennifer Amur sent out the following announcement on Friday:

We’re thrilled to announce that Gerry Shih will become our next India bureau chief, effective in June.

From New Delhi, Gerry will operate across a massive canvas as India is projected to become the world’s most populous country within a few years. He will chronicle the paths Indian leaders take to confront climate change, poverty, intolerance, a rivalry with China, and other challenges that will carry enormous weight in shaping the world over the next decade.

Gerry has already demonstrated his ability to tackle big stories that play out on a staggering scale, having reported from China for the past six years, including two with The Post. He won the Asia Society’s Osborn Elliott Prize in 2019 for work that captured how China’s breakneck-speed growth had upended ordinary lives through accidents, injuries and disease. He reported widely across China, including courageous on-the-ground work at the height of the coronavirus outbreak in February. He even ventured to Tajikistan to reveal the existence of a previously unknown Chinese military base.
After effectively being expelled from China in March, when Gerry was among a dozen U.S. correspondents who were stripped of accreditation because of tensions between Beijing and Washington, he has been covering China from a base elsewhere in Asia while serving as interim Beijing bureau chief. In his new role in Delhi, Gerry will work closely with Niha Masih, our India-based reporter. In addition to India, the bureau is responsible for Bangladesh, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and Nepal.

Gerry began his career as a James Reston reporting fellow at The New York Times. He later worked for the Bay Citizen and then Reuters, covering California politics and Silicon Valley. He moved to China, reporting for Reuters and then the Associated Press. He speaks Chinese, Japanese and Spanish.

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.