Reuters names deputy top news editors

Reuters Americas editor Jim Gaines made the following staff announcement:

We are delighted to announce that two superb journalists, Claudia Parsons and Ed Tobin, will join the Americas news editing team as deputy top news editors.

They both have excellent news judgment, a wide range of experience, and have always been committed to improving the quality of what we do. They also have an enviable track record of working well with just about anybody to achieve great results. They will work closely with the two of us and Kieran Murray in Latin America, forming a news editing team that will now be in a position to really drive improvements on the file. That means producing more exclusives, more depth, more compelling “must read” pieces, and better writing. This will, of course, be done in close collaboration with specialist editors, bureau chiefs, reporters and desk editors. We will also be working very closely with Mike Williams and the Enterprise Team.

There will be some changes in the way we approach top stories as a result of these appointments, and we will be letting you know about those over the next few weeks. We are, for example, much more likely to ask to do the final edit (or at least sign off) on big stories and news from assignments that we expect to make the front page. This means more of our biggest stories will get attention and focus but we won’t be adding layers of editors on those stories.

Here are some brief bios of Claudia and Ed:

Claudia, who began with Reuters as a graduate trainee in London and Madrid in 1997-99, has been the deputy enterprise editor in New York for the past two years. She has made a huge contribution to establishing special reports and enterprise journalism here, working with Jim Impoco and now Mike Williams. Claudia has extensive reporting experience from some of the world’s big trouble spots, including being one of the first reporters to enter Afghanistan with the U.S. Marines in late 2001, being embedded with the U.S. Navy in the Persian Gulf at the time of the invasion of Iraq, and then six months in Baghdad in 2006-2007. She has also worked as a correspondent in Milan, Ankara, as an editor on the world desk in London, and as a general news correspondent in New York, where she had stints covering Obama, Romney and Hillary Clinton. Born in Scotland and with a BA Hons. 1st class in Classics and Modern Languages from Oxford University, Claudia lives with her husband Rick Perry (not that one – this Rick Perry is a photographer at the New York Times) in Montclair, New Jersey.

Few people know Reuters from the ground up like Ed Tobin, who got a BA in history at Loyola University in Chicago and an MA in journalism at New York University. He began at Reuters in New York as a news assistant 14 years ago and was quickly promoted to reporter – covering paper and steel at first and then food, tobacco and beverages. He then became health team leader, and was quickly promoted to editor in charge, running teams in charge of everything from health to M&A and raw materials over the next few years, and both launched our restructuring coverage and took crucial steps to build our legal coverage, collaborating with Thomson Westlaw after the merger. He also became deputy editor for the entire companies news team in the Americas. Ed has always been great at taking on and delivering on new projects — he spent six months working on a market intelligence and research project for Reuters, helped develop the Bangalore news team, and spearheaded a successful effort to expand our Canadian equities coverage. In the past two years, Ed has been a global specialist editor on Insider, launching coverage of banking, wealth management and commodities. He lives in Montclair with his wife, CNN anchor and correspondent Christine Romans (they met at the Reuters holiday party 12 years ago when she worked here), and three children – note that Ed does come from a family of 17.

Please join us in congratulating Claudia and Ed on their positions and please help them as much as you can – their success in these jobs is crucial to us all. The appointments are effective Monday.