Announcement from International Editor Douglas Jehl and Deputy International Editor Jennifer Amur:
We are very happy to announce that Reem Akkad will become a senior editor on International, a step that recognizes her formidable leadership on the desk and across departments in driving innovative, transcendent storytelling.
Reem is a pioneer who joined International three years ago as the newsroom’s first visual enterprise editor. Her success in delivering visual-first journalism that integrates text, photos, video, graphics and audio has been transformative in modeling new ways to tell stories. Reem has also repeatedly demonstrated the power of collaboration; she leads horizontally, not vertically, by building consensus among peers whom she calls “the collective.”
With this promotion, Reem will continue those partnerships, working on her own and with regional editors to drive International coverage that is even more visual, more innovative and more accessible. She will lead an effort to develop a strategy around International’s visual storytelling, including experimentation with social-first stories. Reem will also join a rotation of editors who step in periodically to run coverage across the department.
Last year, Reem won the Punch Sulzberger Innovative Editor of the Year award. “Leadership is not about how many people you manage, but rather how you can positively influence and work outside of your own department, a skill that Akkad has clearly mastered,” the judges said.
Reem’s work has been on the cutting edge of digital storytelling. She was a lead editor on an award-winning, immersive story that brought readers the sounds of Cairo. As the war in Ukraine entered its second year, she edited a story that found a fresh, video-driven approach to tell the story of life without power, which just won a Webby award. And among her many contributions to the coverage of the war in Gaza, she partnered with graphics, photo and video to illustrate the extent of the displacement of Gazans.
We expect that Reem will also continue to serve as a valued mentor to other journalists in the room who have been inspired by her success in breaking boundaries.
Born in Syria, Reem is a graduate of Columbia University, with a master’s degree in International Relations. She joined The Post in 2015 as a senior producer in Video. In her free time, she makes TikTok dance videos that she does not post, and shops on Poshmark for the best deals on fashion.
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