Politico hires Reyes as head of health care team

Politico managing editor Sundeep Reddy sent the following to the staff:

We’re thrilled to welcome Eli Reyes, an experienced newsroom leader with a track record of delivering accountability journalism across politics and business coverage, as the new head of POLITICO’s health care team.

Eli will guide our stellar health care reporters and editors who have been delivering hard-hitting, agenda-setting journalism over the past decade — even before they dominated coverage of an earth-shaking pandemic over the past year.

Eli most recently served as deputy editorial page editor at Newsday, where he helped supervise the newspaper’s editorial board, edited daily and project content and shepherded reader initiatives. He was previously a politics and government editor at The Washington Post, where he ran a team of journalists covering city, county and state governments and guided investigative work, including coverage that led to a federal probe of a D.C. mayor’s election campaign. Before the Post, he held numerous roles at Newsday — including as its business editor during the 2007-2009 recession and financial crisis and as an editor overseeing specialized beats including health policy, immigration and demographics.

Journalists who have worked with Eli, including some in our own newsroom, describe him as a thoughtful leader and talented line editor who loves diving into a big story to elevate reporters’ work. We’ll be looking to Eli to expand on our health care team’s already strong track record of powerful accountability and enterprise work alongside our indispensable journalism for thousands of subscribers each day.

Eli is a graduate of The City College of The City University of New York and is a member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. He is a proud Bronx boy who roots for the Yankees and has not lost hope of one day being able to accurately read ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics.

He’ll get started on Tuesday. Please join us in giving Eli a warm POLITICO welcome.