WSJ names Middle East editor, deputy world editors

Wall Street Journal world editor Adam Horvath sent out the following announcement on Thursday:

I’m glad to announce that Marjorie Olster is joining the World desk as our lead Middle East editor.

Marjorie spent most of the last four years as a top editor for the Associated Press in Cairo, helping direct coverage of the Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan and Pakistan. She oversaw AP’s Arab Spring coverage, including reporting on Syria that made AP a Pulitzer finalist in 2012.  Before that she was on AP’s international desk in NY, and has also worked as an editor for Agence France-Press. As a reporter for Reuters, she covered Spain, Israel, U.S. financial markets and occasionally the United Nations, as well as reporting on the 9/11 attacks in New York City.

Most recently, returning to the U.S. for AP, she was Global Economics Correspondent in Washington covering the IMF, World Bank and the U.S. Trade Representative. She has twice won the Newswomen’s Club of New York Front Page Award and is a past president of the group. She also has taught as an adjunct journalism professor at Columbia University, and is fluent in Spanish and Hebrew and conversant in Arabic.

Please make her feel welcome, in a language of your choice.

Also, repeating this announcement from last week (as I’ve learned all staff didn’t get it)

I’m happy to announce that Eduardo Kaplan and Peter Saidel will be Deputy World Editors helping to lead coverage of global political, economic and general news and run the World desk in New York. They’ll work closely with key counterparts in London, Hong Kong and on the Real-Time Desk here to help make sure World coverage is the timeliest and smartest it can be. Eduardo will be the lead point person for breaking news and Peter for in-depth coverage and features, but each will also step in for the other, and both will take responsibility to make sure we’re doing the best by all of our publishing platforms.

With this move, Eduardo officially broadens his duties from the Real-Time Deputy position he has held since late 2010. Eduardo over the last three years already has made himself a model of multi-platform editing; in coordinating the approaches of Dow Jones Newswires, wsj.com and the newspaper, he has become a leading expert in all three. Eduardo joined Dow Jones in 1996 to start its Spanish-language news service (he also is conversant in Portuguese, French and Italian), and went on to become Latin America editor, deputy managing editor and then managing editor for Money coverage at Newswires. Eduardo previously worked at Scripps-Howard’s United Media newspaper syndicate and started his journalism career at the weekly newspaper Opinar in his native Uruguay. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Hunter College.

Peter, already our lead editor of Extras and other enterprise stories on the World desk, will spread his influence over developing those stories for all platforms. He will run the World desk on Sundays, taking over when Margaret DeStreel moves to the Real-Time desk later this month. Peter has been a news editor for The Wall Street Journal since 2005, editing national and international news before the current World desk was formed in 2008. He has distinguished himself in editing coverage of the Arab Spring and U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as conflict zones from Pakistan through Southeast Asia. Peter joined Dow Jones in 2000 —fresh from Columbia University’s MFA Fiction program—with the Far Eastern Economic Review in Hong Kong, where he was assistant managing editor and handled coverage of Asian politics and economics. He also worked for Unicef and for the Vietnam Investment Review in Hanoi. He graduated from Wesleyan University.