Washington Post taps Rowland as editor of transportation, energy and health care team

Washington Post business editor Lori Montgomery and deputy business editor Sandhya Somashekhar sent out the following on Monday:

We’re delighted to announce that Chris Rowland, one of the most accomplished reporters on the Business Desk, is stepping into a new role as editor of our transportation, energy and health care team.

Since joining The Post in 2018 as a business of health care reporter, Chris has shown a remarkable talent for finding the big story and executing it with rigor and panache. He landed his first front-page story within a month of arriving, a piece about price-fixing by generic drug manufacturers. During the pandemic, Chris focused on the health care supply chain and the race to develop and manufacture coronavirus vaccines. Most recently, he wrote a series of scoopy stories about aging and assisted living, serving as a lead reporter on The Post’s investigation of walkaway deaths at assisted living facilities, which was recognized by the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing.

Chris’s new job marks a return to editing. He joined The Post from the Boston Globe, where he served in the combined role of assistant managing editor and Washington bureau chief. Chris led a five-person bureau that produced distinguished coverage of Washington and American politics. (Most of Chris’s colleagues from the Globe DC bureau are now also at The Post, a happy coincidence for which Chris thanks former Post – and Globe – editor Marty Baron.) In addition to running the Globe’s presidential campaign coverage in 2012 and 2016, Chris wrote stand-out stories about the risks facing patients from a rush to embrace electronic health records and the utter dysfunction at the Federal Election Commission. Previously, he was the Globe’s metro political editor in Boston as well as a health care writer covering Big Pharma, insurance companies and hospitals. Chris began his career as a political writer for the Providence Journal in Rhode Island and a reporter for the Brattleboro Reformer in Vermont.

A graduate of the University of Arizona, Chris lives in the District with his wife and their daughter. His two older daughters live in Brooklyn and Vermont.

Please join us in congratulating Chris on his new role. He begins immediately.