AP Appoints New England Bureau Chief

By: William J. Kole, a veteran bureau chief and foreign correspondent for The Associated Press, has been named AP's chief of bureau for New England.

The appointment was announced Tuesday by Kate Lee Butler, vice president for U.S. Newspaper Markets.

"Bill brings strong news experience to the New England job, as well as a good understanding of our members there and AP's mission in this challenging environment for news media," Butler said.

Kole, 48, will be based in Boston and oversee AP news and business operations in a newly expanded territory encompassing all six New England states: Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont.

He succeeds David Marcus, bureau chief for southern New England, who has been promoted to assistant director of newspaper accounts at the news cooperative's headquarters in New York.

A Massachusetts native, Kole has been chief of bureau in Vienna since 2001, in charge of eight bureaus covering a dozen Central and East European countries. He has reported extensively on terrorism, immigration, politics and unrest across Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

Kole previously served as bureau chief in Hartford, Conn., from 2000-01, and in Amsterdam from 1997-2000.

From his base in Vienna, Kole led AP's multimedia coverage of ethnic conflict in Macedonia; the arrest and death of former Yugoslav strongman Slobodan Milosevic; the capture of Bosnian Serb war crimes fugitive Radovan Karadzic; Kosovo's declaration of independence; and the trial of Austria's Josef Fritzl, who imprisoned his daughter for 24 years and fathered her seven children.

Kole also helped cover major breaking stories outside his region, including the car crash that killed Princess Diana, the death of Pope John Paul II, the London subway terrorist attacks and last summer's violent street protests in Iran.

He joined the AP in 1988 in Detroit and moved to Lansing as a Michigan statehouse reporter in 1992. The following year, he transferred to the International Desk in New York, and in 1995 he was posted to Paris.

Kole studied journalism at Boston University and worked for The Sun Chronicle in Attleboro, Mass., before joining the AP. He and his wife, Terry DeYonker Kole, a former illustrator for AP Graphics and The Detroit News, have two grown children.

Marcus, 57, has been bureau chief for southern New England since 2006.