Washington Post announces newsroom changes

The following excerpt announcement was sent out by The Washington Post executive editor Sally Buzbee:

Cameron Barr will become senior managing editor, in charge of directing our news report day-to-day and over the long term. He will oversee the four deputy managing editors who will drive coverage across our many platforms, as well as the Business, Data, Foreign, Investigative and Outlook departments.

Kat Downs Mulder will move to a joint role as chief product officer and managing editor. In the newsroom, Kat will continue to oversee Video, Audio, Photo, Graphics, Design, Audience, the Universal Desk, Emerging News Products, the Multi-Platform Editing Desk, Lede Lab and the Next Generation and other initiatives. In addition, she will now also run the product teams and newsroom engineering. We are excited about this hybrid role, leveraging Kat’s experience in both the newsroom and product, a dual focus that will help accelerate our digital innovation.

We are expanding Krissah Thompson’s portfolio as managing editor, adding oversight of Features and the climate/environment team, two coverage areas that are key to our efforts to attract younger and more diverse audiences. Krissah will maintain her focus on coverage of race, gender and identity and her work to build a stronger culture of belonging in our newsroom, and will now take on recruitment and newsroom training.

After a distinguished run as a masthead editor, Tracy Grant has requested a return to writing. Tracy has made incomparable contributions as managing editor working on news operations, budget and personnel since 2018 and before that as a deputy managing editor and senior editor. After working on a forthcoming magazine piece, Tracy expressed a keen desire to focus full-time on reporting and writing. She will move to a new role on Jan. 1 and we will have more to say soon about her responsibilities.

As part of these changes, we will soon post a job for a new managing editor to oversee significant portions of the news report, including the many coverage areas included in National — politics and government, the team covering the United States, and the health & science, national security and national enterprise desks.

We will also post for a new position of deputy managing editor for news operations, who will work closely with me, the managing editors and department heads on budget, administrative issues and newsroom standards.