Martin Howell, top news editor and deputy editor for the Americas at Reuters, sent out the following staff announcement on Thursday:
I am delighted to announce that we have appointed two very senior and talented journalists to the top news team in the Americas.Tomasz Janowski, who is currently the acting Asia economics editor based in Tokyo, and was previously Asia economics correspondent and Japan economics and political editor, will be joining us in mid-August. Tomasz has been leading regional economic coverage and guiding initiative reporting on economic policy in his current role. Before that he helped to produce agenda-setting coverage from China and Japan, including stories on the recovery after the 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami, the Fukushima nuclear plant clean-up, as well as the Bank of Japan’s shift to more aggressive stimulus and Shinzo Abe’s return to power. He led the team that produced a series of initiative stories taking a critical look at various aspects of “Abenomics.” Tomasz, who is a Polish national, was in the team that won Reuters Story of the Year in 2012 for our superb global central bank coverage, and he was in the team nominated for a Society of Publishers in Asia award in 2014 for the Abenomics coverage. He has also held a series of other senior positions in his 21-year career with Reuters, including chief sub-editor in Asia, economics correspondent for Central and Eastern Europe, senior financial correspondent in Frankfurt, and senior correspondent in Athens. He has spent time in North America before – getting an MA in journalism at the University of Western Ontario and being a general assignment reporter at the Plain Dealer in Cleveland for six months in 1990. Among interests to note: he trains as a kick boxer, and looks after a large Polish hound called Homer who follows Tomasz and his wife Kasia around the world.Also joining us, effective immediately, is John Pickering, who many of you will have come across in the past few weeks while he was on temporary assignment. John is a veteran former Bloomberg editor with more than 20 years experience, including five years in its US legal team as a senior editor and as bankruptcy team leader. Among the stories John has run include key parts of Bloomberg’s coverage of the financial crisis, including the Lehman and General Motors’ bankruptcies, and the AIG rescue. Other positions he previously held include features editor for Bloomberg’s bond team, deputy team leader for the finance team, and New York-based Latin American team leader. John, who has a BA from Columbia University and started his career at Accounting Today, also spent five years with Bloomberg in London, where I worked with him for a year. He was an editor at large in charge of Italian and Scandinavian news at various times during that period. John, who was born in Cleveland (what is it with the Cleveland links in this announcement?) lives in Brooklyn. He has two sons and a daughter, and is a golfer and a pianist in his leisure time.Please join me in welcoming them both to the Americas team.