FT taps Smyth to be US energy editor

Jamie Smyth

The Financial Times has appointed Jamie Smyth as U.S. energy editor in New York.

Smyth will oversee coverage of the oil and gas sector, including super majors like ExxonMobil and Chevron, as well as the new investment pouring into the renewables industry thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act’s tax incentives.

Smyth will also lead Energy Source, the FT’s twice-weekly newsletter with news, analysis and opinion on the oil and gas industry, as well as the broader energy sector. Under Smyth’s leadership, Energy Source will be relaunching later this year.

“The energy industry has everything the FT cares about: big money, global players, geopolitical conflict, technological disruption – the works,” said U.S. managing editor Peter Spiegel in a statement. “Jamie has been one of the FT’s most intrepid foreign correspondents, making him the perfect person to tell the American energy story in a global context.”

Smyth joined the FT in 2014 and has since held roles on three continents. Most recently, he was the U.S. pharmaceutical correspondent, covering the COVID-19 pandemic and fentanyl crisis. Prior to this, he was Australia and South Pacific correspondent in Sydney and Ireland correspondent in Dublin.

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.