Reuters hires Walcott as foreign affairs/national security editor

Kevin Krolicki, Washington bureau chief for Reuters, and Kevin Drawbaugh, deputy bureau chief, sent out the following announcement on Wednesday evening:

We’re pleased to announce that John Walcott is joining the Reuters Washington bureau as foreign affairs and national security editor. He began work this week.

John is an accomplished veteran of international relations journalism. From 2011 to 2015, he was team leader for national security and foreign affairs at Bloomberg. Prior to that, he was Washington bureau chief for McClatchy and for Knight Ridder. Previously, he was foreign editor and national editor of U.S. News & World Report, national security correspondent at The Wall Street Journal and chief diplomatic correspondent at Newsweek.

The Knight Ridder and McClatchy Washington bureaus under John’s leadership won acclaim for their early critical coverage of the Bush administration’s allegations about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and ties to international terrorism. In 2008, John was the inaugural winner of the I.F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence from the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University. He also has won diplomatic reporting awards from Georgetown University and the National Press Club.

John has also been an adjunct professor at Georgetown since 1997, teaching media and international relations.

In his role, John will manage the reporters on the Washington-based foreign policy team and the UN bureau in New York. He will report to the Washington bureau chief.

Please welcome John aboard and make him feel at home as he takes on a crucial role for the Washington bureau and the global Reuters news operation.