Reuters names new Americas editor

Reuters editor in chief Steve Adler and deputy editor in chief Paul Ingrassia sent out the following announcement last week:

We’re delighted to announce that our search for an Americas Editor has reached a most welcome conclusion. Jim Gaines, whom we’ve all come to know and respect in recent months, will be moving into the Americas role.

As you all know, Jim has been our editor for ethics, standards and innovation since joining Reuters last April. During that time he has been drawn increasingly into an active role on the news file at times when we’ve been away from the office. He proved to be such an effective editor and leader that it just made sense for him to take the regional news editor position overseeing all journalists in North America and Latam. Jim has great news judgment, editing ability and people skills, and has impressed everyone with whom he has worked during his few months at Reuters.

He’ll report to Paul, and will become part of Steve’s broadened senior editorial team. More details on that will follow. Jim also will serve as Paul’s stand-in to direct and coordinate coverage of major global stories when Paul is away from the office. And he will continue to oversee, with Reinhard Krause in London, our global photography department, drawing on his unique past experience as editor of three magazines famous for their photographs: Time, Life and People (not in that order). Jim spent most of his journalistic career at Time Inc., where his last job was Corporate Editor, sharing oversight of all the company’s magazines with editor-in-chief Norman Pearlstine.

But his lives before and after that career were notable as well, including stints as a writer in the national affairs department of Newsweek, as a reporter on WNET’s nightly news program The Fifty-First State, and as the author of several works of history. While editing TIME he interviewed everyone from Fidel Castro to Nelson Mandela, and his signal interview with Slobodan Milosevic helped lead to the Dayton Accords.

After Time Inc., he edited the first digital multimedia general interest magazine in America, called FLYP, and then started his own multimedia publishing company, StoryRiver Media, in Washington, DC, where he lives with his wife Karen and their teenage children. His interest in the iPad as a publishing platform led him to a brief stint at News Corp’s The Daily before he joined Reuters.

We are pleased to have such a seasoned and adventurous journalist to guide our coverage of the Americas, especially as we enter the 2012 presidential campaign season.