Reuters names deputy international affairs editor

Marilyn Thompson, Washington bureau chief for Reuters, sent out the following staff announcement:

We’re delighted to announce that David Storey has been appointed Deputy International Affairs Editor, a new position aimed at improving global coverage of international stories with a Washington angle — stories that play to the strength of our extensive global bureau network.

David will help manage the quality of a voluminous amount of daily copy that flows out of Washington and strengthen our offering of medium-term enterprise and initiative stories. It is a new and challenging role that, we believe, will dramatically improve our file globally and push reporters to new levels of excellence. David is one of our most experienced journalists – not just in Washington but across Reuters.

David joined Reuters in 1972 as a trainee in London and worked as a foreign correspondent based in Austria, Germany, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Turkey, Poland and Bangkok before becoming Reuters political correspondent in London from 1990-1993, where he covered the melodramatic fall from power of Margaret Thatcher. He then spent the next decade as the National Security and Foreign Affairs Editor in Washington – a job that began on the historic day President Bill Clinton arranged the handshake on the White House lawn between Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin, and went on from there, through elections, wars, economic rise and fall and eventually 9/11.

He spent the next 10 years as Editor-in-Charge on the Americas desk which included a lengthy stint as Acting North American Political & General News Editor.  When the D.C. desk was closed at the end of last year, David established the Breaking News Team in the Washington bureau, an operation that has helped to inject a new sense of urgency into parts of the bureau’s news file.