Washington Post names three new deputy managing editors

The following excerpt announcement was sent out by The Washington Post executive editor Sally Buzbee, senior managing editor Cameron Barr, managing editor Tracy Grant, managing editor Krissah Thompson, and managing editor and chief product officer Kat Downs Mulder:

We are thrilled to announce that Sharif Durhams, Monica Norton and Mark W. Smith will become deputy managing editors of The Washington Post.

Sharif has been managing editor of North Carolina’s News & Observer and Herald-Sun since January 2021, where he launched a plan to increase the staff and served as interim editor from July to September. This will be a return to The Post for Sharif; he was our night homepage editor for much of 2020 after a three-year run as a senior editor for programming at CNN. Before that, he was one of our homepage editors from 2015 to 2017. Sharif’s pre-Post career included overseeing social media and digital strategy at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, where he also spent three years on its breaking news hub as a general assignment reporter; covering state government and serving as a GA reporter at the Charlotte Observer; and, in his first stint at the Journal Sentinel, covering higher education.

Monica, the deputy Local editor for planning and enterprise since 2011, is one of our most respected and trusted newsroom leaders. Since her arrival at The Post in 2005, Monica has also served as Metro’s day editor, technology editor and assistant Maryland editor for education. In previous roles at Newsday, she edited Washington news and served as assistant and then deputy Long Island editor. Before that, she was a bureau chief and assignment editor at Gannett Suburban Newspapers and a reporter at the Evening Sun and the Baltimore Sun. Her degree from the University of Maryland is in journalism.

Mark has been director of social and operations on the Audience team since 2018, and before that served as deputy Audience editor and mobile web editor. Mark came to us from USA Today, where he spent two years as senior manager for social media marketing. At the Detroit Free Press, he ran the website during the early morning hours, assigning and editing breaking news coverage while curating the home page and social media feeds. Mark was also the paper’s technology columnist. After earning a degree in journalism at Central Michigan University, he got his start as a multimedia specialist at the Jackson (Mich.) Citizen Patriot.

Please join us in congratulating our three new DMEs. They’ll start Jan. 31.