Cameron Barr, national editor at The Washington Post, has been promoted to managing editor in charge of news and features, Executive Editor Martin Baron announced Wednesday:
All of you know Cameron as a driven, focused, and super-smart journalist. During his nearly three years as national editor, and in his previous positions at The Post, Cameron has directed coverage of some of our biggest and most challenging stories, always with intelligence and a deep reservoir of energy.
He encourages and supports ambition in imagining our journalistic possibilities. He is resourceful in assuring that we deliver on what we set out to accomplish. He displays quick, competitive reflexes in responding to news. And he is a rigorous and elegant editor of copy.
Barr fills a managing editor slot recently vacated by Kevin Merida, who left The Post to oversee The Undefeated, ESPN’s foundering “Black Grantland.” Baron did not announce a successor for Barr on the national desk.
Here’s Baron’s announcement:
I am pleased to announce that Cameron Barr will become managing editor overseeing news and features.
All of you know Cameron as a driven, focused, and super-smart journalist. During his nearly three years as national editor, and in his previous positions at The Post, Cameron has directed coverage of some of our biggest and most challenging stories, always with intelligence and a deep reservoir of energy.
He encourages and supports ambition in imagining our journalistic possibilities. He is resourceful in assuring that we deliver on what we set out to accomplish. He displays quick, competitive reflexes in responding to news. And he is a rigorous and elegant editor of copy.
Cameron has embraced The Post’s digital aspirations. He oversaw the launch of PowerPost and The Daily 202. The national staff’s live blogs pop up fast when major news breaks, drawing huge numbers of readers online. Some of our most successful new initiatives – notably Post Nation, Speaking of Science, Checkpoint, and To Your Health – have been launched under his watch and with his enthusiastic guidance.
The achievements of the national staff, of course, are the result of a talented team that takes initiative and demonstrates leadership. We’ve seen that in the groundbreaking politics coverage that has won wide acclaim for scoops and distinctive enterprise. We’ve seen that in our coverage of national security, where we have broken signature stories on terrorism. We’ve seen that in the widely admired longform work of national’s enterprise team. And we’ve seen that in health and science coverage, with standout coverage of the Affordable Care Act and Ebola.
Time and again with difficult stories – whether with NSA revelations, the Secret Service, or this year’s police shooting database – we’ve positioned ourselves for success, drawing collaboratively on the abundant talent in Cameron’s department and others.
Cameron comes to this job with an impressive resume. Before becoming national editor in February 2013, he was deputy national editor, national security editor and Middle East editor. He reported from The Post’s bureau in Rockville, where he exposed County Executive Doug Duncan’s ties to lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
Prior to joining The Post in 2004, Cameron was Middle East correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor, covering the second intifada and the beginning of the Iraq war. In that time, he reported from Iran, Iraq during and after Saddam Hussein, Jordan, Syria, and other countries. He was that paper’s Tokyo bureau chief from 1994 to 2000, covering the region’s financial collapse, the fall of Suharto and the independence of East Timor, and the commercial sexual abuse of children in East Asia. He was the Monitor’s deputy foreign editor and roving South Asia correspondent before that assignment.
From 1988 to 1990, Cameron was a staff reporter for The American Lawyer, writing major stories that included a behind-the-scenes account of Union Carbide’s settlement of claims arising from the Bhopal gas leak and a profile of Colombia drug-court judges, who were then being killed at a rate of roughly one per week.
He has won the Overseas Press Club Award and the Sigma Delta Chi investigative reporting award, and was a co-winner of the National Magazine Award.
Cameron notes that he grew up seemingly everywhere – South Asia, Africa, Europe, and suburban Washington “as the only child of a Foreign Service officer who maintained a ritualistic devotion to the ‘news fix’ provided by the International Herald Tribune and the BBC.” He graduated from Brown University with a degree in religious studies, having spent 1984-1985 at Banaras Hindu University in Varanasi, India. He lives in Kalorama Triangle with his partner Shar Taylor and his daughters Via, 15, and Sydney, 13.
Obviously, Cameron’s experience and expertise cover a wide territory. But he also brings an instinct to always know more – a trait he’ll have ample opportunity to indulge in this new job. He’ll be meeting with everyone, hearing your concerns and convictions and hopes, with the goal of assuring that we work closely with each other and take full advantage of the creativity that animates this extraordinary newsroom.
Please congratulate Cameron on his appointment. He’ll start Monday, December 7.
