Audi named chief of Western U.S. news for WSJ

Wall Street Journal U.S. news editor Glenn Hall sent out the following announcement to the staff:

I’m very excited to announce that Tammy Audi is the new Western Chief for U.S. News, leading our reporting teams in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Dallas.

Tammy has long been an essential player on our Western front, serving as the deputy chief while also driving our coverage of religion and being the go-to reporter on big breaking news stories on the West Coast.

She demonstrates grace under pressure time and again, most notably in December during the San Bernardino terror attacks, writing a number of memorable page one stories, including a look at the couple behind the shooting that led with where they wed. She tracked that anecdote down the old-fashioned way: by calling every mosque she could until she found the right one. She also was a key player on the team that literally covered every step of Pope Francis’ historic visit to the U.S. last year.

Before coming to U.S. News, Tammy spent several years covering the casino and hotel industries for the Journal after joining the LA Bureau in 2007. She left the wiles of the gambling industry and visits to sin city and to join U.S. News. She then covered almost every mass shooting from LA to Newtown and developed what she calls a weird specialty of profiling killers.

Tammy came to WSJ after nine years at The Detroit Free Press, where she was on the investigative team, focusing mostly on terrorism, immigration and civil liberties in the post 9-11 era. Her early career included a stint at the Philadelphia Inquirer and a freelance gig in Jerusalem with the New York Times. She is a graduate of Boston University and hails from Danvers, Mass., a northern suburb of Boston that used to be called Salem but strategically changed its name after the infamous witch trials.

Reportedly, Tammy has a rather large collection of Star Wars memorabilia and — a word to the wise — you should never engage in an argument with her about whether the latest Star Wars movie is as good as the original.

The Force is strong with this one.