AP biz editor Gibbs to oversee news partnerships

Associated Press executive editor Sally Buzbee sent out the following announcement:

Colleagues,

Today I’m making three important announcements about three of the best journalists at AP. Each will take on a role as a senior leader in news, dedicated to helping all of you do your best work and keep this great news organization strong and competitive into the future.

• Noreen Gillespie is the new deputy managing editor for U.S. news, an all-formats position that will oversee news gathering and presentation across the four U.S. regions and Washington.

• Sarah Nordgren is the new deputy managing editor for sports, business, entertainment/lifestyles, and health/science, helping the leaders of those departments guide exceptional journalism and find new product opportunities. Sarah and Noreen will both report to managing editor Brian Carovillano.

• Lisa Gibbs is the new director of news partnerships, helping manage and expand partnerships with other news organizations, technology companies, foundations and more. Lisa will report to David Scott, deputy managing editor for operations.

Also today, we’re kicking off a new (internal only) video series called “The Scoop: The latest news about News at AP.” Along with the recent town halls, this is another way to help everyone in news stay up-to-date about our mission and our work.

As deputy sports editor, Noreen helped guide sports to become a true innovator in digital storytelling and audience engagement. She helped lead a mobile video initiative that took fans behind the scenes of sporting events, social promotion efforts that are world class, and automation efforts that give AP customers expanded minor-league sports content. Sports has led that innovation in presentation while keeping its strong focus on reporting out exclusive news and routinely landing big scoops.

Before coming to sports, Noreen spent five years as deputy central editor in Chicago, where she helped guide award-winning coverage of the Fort Hood shooting, the tornado that leveled Moore, Oklahoma, and Detroit’s bankruptcy. Before that, she helped create the first U.S. regional desk in Atlanta. Noreen is both a collaborative colleague and a hard-charging journalist with the highest of standards.

Sarah, a mentor to many across the AP and a journalist of wisdom and creative ideas, has for the past two years served as operations director for U.S. news, helping to roll out new storytelling techniques such as story summaries and the Latest, working on cross-format integration and managing budgets. She has also served as executive director of Associated Press Media Editors, an industry group that includes 3,500 media organizations, a role she will continue in for a few more months.

Sarah previously worked for several years in products, serving as a liaison with news on content development, and also previously served in a deputy managing editor role overseeing AP beat coverage and the national reporting team. She was also previously a director of state news, supervising coverage and operations across the AP’s state bureaus. Our high-performing sports, business, entertainment/lifestyles and health/science departments will benefit from her ideas, her news instincts and her product knowledge.

Lisa has been global business editor since joining the AP in 2014, focusing the department on consumer-friendly coverage and on digital and visual storytelling. Both an inspirational and pragmatic leader, she helped drive AP’s industry-leading efforts to automate earnings reports and free up journalists’ time to focus on deeper and distinctive work. Before joining AP, Lisa was a senior writer and editor at Money magazine, and was executive business editor at the Miami Herald.

In her new role, Lisa will work across the news department, and with colleagues in other departments, to help guide and develop news partnerships with other news organizations, technology companies, emerging media and foundations. Those partnerships — always closely adhering to AP standards and values and retaining our precious editorial independence — can help us innovate to stay competitive and forward-looking in the rapidly changing news industry.

Please join me in congratulating Noreen, Sarah and Lisa.

Best,

Sally

Brad Foss is the interim business editor.