Reuters adds to its national affairs team

Jason Szep, U.S. national affairs editor at Reuters, sent out the following announcement on Wednesday:

I’m pleased to announce three appointments as we begin to build a U.S. National Affairs team with a mission to deepen Reuters coverage on U.S. national issues. As much as possible, this team will work closely with reporters and visual teams across the country and the globe on stories that cut across a range of beats – from general news and corporate investigations to richly reported stories on the intersection of politics and economics.

• Peter Eisler will be joining us from USA Today where he spent the past 20 years as an investigative reporter. Peter has exposed problems ranging from lax enforcement of U.S. safe drinking water laws to poor security at Russia’s chemical weapons stockpiles. His work has helped spur major changes in public policy, including laws requiring compensation for sick nuclear weapons workers, improved fire protections in nursing homes and better safety testing for school lunch food. Peter has a long list of national reporting awards, including a Gerald Loeb Award, a Hillman Prize, a duPont-Columbia Award, and multiple honors in the National Press Club Awards, the National Headliner Awards and other major competitions. He’s a board member and treasurer at the Fund for Investigative Journalism, which provides grants to independent reporters for investigative stories, and he volunteers as a journalist fellow for the News Literacy Project, which teaches high school students to be discerning news consumers. Please join me in welcoming Peter, who starts next week in Washington.
• Kristina Cooke joins the team after a successful four years as an investigative correspondent with the U.S. Enterprise team. Her special reports have dug into criminal justice, immigration, income inequality, economics and a range of other subjects including a wonderful examination published this week on how elected high-court judges are far more likely to affirm death sentences than appointed justices. Her work has been honored by the New York Press Club, the Deadline Club, Investigative Reporters and Editors and the Newswomen’s Club of New York. Kristina’s story, with legal reporter Dan Levine, on law enforcement’s unequal treatment of undocumented crime victims led to the California legislature passing a bill to address the issue. Kristina grew up in Germany, studied International Relations and History at the London School of Economics and Television Current Affairs Journalism at London’s City University. She joined Reuters in London in 2005 after working for CNN and The Economist’s “World In” journal. Kristina will remain based in San Francisco.
• Also on the West Coast, Tim Reid joins the team after three years of covering economics, municipal finance and general news in Los Angeles and a political correspondent posting in Washington. Tim joined Reuters in 2010 from The Times of London where he was Washington correspondent for eight years and a foreign correspondent prior to that with assignments ranging from Afghanistan and Zimbabwe to Jordan and Qatar. Tim was also embedded with the U.S. Fifth Fleet during President Bill Clinton’s 1998 bombing of Iraq. A trained lawyer, Tim began his career as a journalist with The London Telegraph after working for three years as a media and entertainment lawyer. Tim will remain in Los Angeles.

Please join me in congratulating Peter, Kristina and Tim.