Financial Times names Garrahan its news editor

The Financial Times announced Wednesday the appointment of Matthew Garrahan as news editor, effective April 15.

Garrahan will replace Peter Spiegel, who takes up the role of U.S. managing editor in New York this spring.

During a 20-year career with the FT, spanning London, California and New York, Garrahan has been a companies reporter; covered the sports, leisure and media industries; and interviewed everyone from Tim Cook and Rupert Murdoch to Angelina Jolie and Hugo Chavez.

As Los Angeles correspondent in the nineties, he reported on California’s economy, politics and business trends, as well as the emergence of social media giants Facebook and Twitter. He spent 11 years in the U.S., moving from the West Coast to New York to take up the role of global media editor, before returning to London in 2017.

FT editor Lionel Barber said: “Matt is a hugely talented, award-winning journalist, with a world-class Rolodex. He will approach his new role with the same fearlessness and rigour he has shown throughout his two decades reporting for the FT.”

Garrahan was named Business Journalist of the year at the 2018 British Press Awards for his reporting on Rupert Murdoch’s empire, the Harvey Weinstein scandal and the rise of streaming. He was named Arts & Entertainment journalist of the year at the 2018 British Journalism Awards, where judges said he “broke significant new ground in the big story of the year, by revealing how leading legal firms were complicit in the [Weinstein] cover up.”

In the U.S., Garrahan was honored by the Los Angeles Press Club for his business writing and the Mirror Awards for excellence in media reporting. In 2014 the Society for Advancing Business Writing and Editing awarded him the breaking news prize for his scoop on Apple’s $3 billion purchase of Beats.