Announcement from Interim Deputy Foreign Editor Susan Levine and Foreign Editor Douglas Jehl:
We’re delighted to announce that Alan Sipress will become a senior editor on Foreign, overseeing coverage of much of the global South.
In this role, Alan will be responsible for coverage across a broad swath of territory extending from the Philippines to West Africa, including our bureaus in Southeast Asia, India, Afghanistan/Pakistan and Africa. In addition to major narratives, Alan will work with correspondents to emphasize coverage related to climate change, technology and global rivalries — issues that feel urgent to American and other global readers and that often transcend individual countries.
Alan is one of the newsroom’s most accomplished editors, with a long record of leading ambitious, high-impact work. He has been Middle East editor since 2018, overseeing coverage from Morocco to Iran that included The Post’s revelatory reporting about the killing of columnist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi officials, a Pulitzer Prize finalist for public service. In Alan’s four full years in the role, the coverage he has overseen has been recognized by the Overseas Press Club with four awards or citations.
More recently, Alan has also taken on broader responsibilities, editing key aspects of The Post’s international reporting on a trove of documents known as the Pandora Papers in partnership with the International Consortium for Investigative Journalism. Over the last three months, he has also led The Post’s coverage of Russia, including investigative work by Greg Miller and Catherine Belton; military coverage by Liz Sly; and the tenacious efforts by Robyn Dixon, Mary Ilyushina and others to report on Russia from outside that country’s borders.
Alan’s own deep experience as a correspondent and editor leaves him ideally equipped to run broad, varied lines of coverage. A gifted story editor, he spent a decade in pivotal roles on the Financial and National desks, beginning with the financial crisis of 2008 and continuing through 2017 as he coordinated National’s day-to-day coverage through President Donald Trump’s first 11 months in office. Alan served as diplomatic correspondent for The Post in 2001 and 2002; he is also a former foreign correspondent with postings in Cairo (for the Philadelphia Inquirer, in the 1990s) and in Jakarta (for The Post, with Ellen Nakashima, from 2002 to 2006).
He is the author of the highly prescient “Fatal Strain,” a 2010 book that tracked the spread of the avian flu virus and warned of a coming pandemic.
Alan is a graduate of Princeton University, and he did a postgraduate year at the Delhi School of Economics in India. He began his career in journalism as a $25-a-story freelance reporter for his hometown newspaper, the Daily Register in Red Bank, N.J. He moved to the Inquirer in 1987 and to The Post in 1998. He will take over responsibility for Southeast Asia, South Asia and Africa in July as other editors take over his current portfolio.
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