AP names new financial markets editor

Associated Press business editor Hal Ritter made the following staff announcement on Wednesday:

In four weeks, Jennifer Merritt will join us as financial markets team leader, filling a job that has been vacant since Joyce Rosenberg became Money & Markets editor. Jennifer has spent the past 3 1/2 years at Dow Jones, most recently as deputy personal finance editor of WSJ.com/SmartMoney.com. Before that, she was in charge of careers, workplace and management education coverage for The Wall Street Journal and WSJ.com.

Before Dow Jones, Jennifer was a special projects editor at Money magazine and business editor of the Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville. She started her career at Business Week, where she produced the widely read and influential annual ranking of business schools.

Jennifer graduated from Northwestern University in 1998 with a bachelor of science degree in journalism. While at Northwestern, she was on a team of student journalists whose investigative work resulted in the pardon of a man on death row who had been beaten by police until he confessed to a murder he did not commit. This month, another defendant in the case, who was serving a life sentence, was freed.

While business editor in Jacksonville in 2006, Jennifer’s business section won a SABEW Best in Business Certificate of Merit. In 2003, she received Northwestern’s first Young Alumni Emerging Leader Award.