The Washington Post: Executive Editor Matt Murray announces three new newsroom departments and leaders

Today I’m excited to announce the superb leaders for these teams, effective May 1. Zach Goldfarb will be the department head of Futures, Lori Montgomery will be the Politics and Government head and Jennifer Amur will run the National department. Each will work closely with editors, reporters, the data analytics and visuals teams, and senior editors in coming weeks as we build out the teams — with more announcements to come. All three will report to Peter Spiegel.

Lori Montgomery will focus on continuing and extending The Post’s longstanding, vital role of reporting and analysis about the politicians, policy and powers in our own backyard and across the country as she TAKES OVER the new Politics and Government department.

A 25-year Post veteran, Lori has run the Business desk since 2021. Under her, The Post has built an already strong economics team into a major force, delivering both insightful coverage of the economy’s role in the 2024 election and scoops on Donald Trump’s transformation of government. Lori will continue to manage that team in the new department. She has pushed for relevant tech coverage on major stories like Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover in 2022 and the rapid rise of artificial intelligence. She launched Andrew Van Dam's popular Department of Data (now also on YouTube), as well as ambitious projects on the effects of economic sanctions, the creator economy and the shocking toll of walkaway deaths at the nation's assisted-living facilities.

Before that, Lori served six years as deputy national editor, assembling an award-winning Climate team and closely overseeing a 2019 series that exposed hotspots of global warming, a project that won the Pulitzer Prize. She expanded the America team and built it into a formidable force on breaking news, and helped drive aggressive and creative coverage of the first Trump administration. As The Post’s first America desk editor, she led the team — with Investigative editor David Fallis — that built the first-ever national database of fatal police shootings in 2015. That project, too, was awarded a Pulitzer Prize.

Before becoming an editor, Lori spent nine years as an economic policy reporter, leading coverage of Washington’s response to the 2008 financial crisis, and six years covering politics and government in D.C. and Maryland. She came to The Post from Knight Ridder, where she spent three years as Europe bureau chief, covering the war over Kosovo and the emerging economies of post-Communist central Europe. Lori also covered politics and government for the Detroit Free Press and the Dallas Times Herald, and spent two years as a policy analyst for the great state of Texas. She is a graduate of Northwestern University with a bachelor’s from the Medill School of Journalism.

Jennifer Amur will run National with a remit to deepen our coverage of all corners of the U.S. and the issues, trends and personalities that shape and inform our national life.

Jenn – who has lived in Alabama, Wisconsin, Missouri, Georgia, Tennessee, California and Michigan – has been on the International desk for nine years, most recently as the deputy. Before that, she was the assignment editor overseeing coverage of South Asia and Africa, and for some months also the Americas. She started on the desk as digital editor.

Jenn has overseen teams and coverage that have won multiple recognitions for distinguished work, including "Africa's Rising Cities" and "Life in West Africa." She edited a story from Angola that was part of Pulitzer-winning 2C series, and several stories in the Pegasus Project, which won a George Polk Award. She helped drive coverage of the Gaza war that won an Overseas Press Club Of America award this year and a run of coverage in 2022 that revealed that evidence used to accuse Indian activists of plotting to overthrow the Modi government was planted, for which Joanna Slater and Niha Masih won the South Asian Journalists Association’s Daniel Pearl Award.

Jenn joined The Post in 2014, first as an editor on the homepage, then overseeing The Post’s newsletters and alerts. She began her career as an editor at the Hurriyet Daily News, an English-language newspaper in Istanbul. She later moved to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, where she worked as a digital projects producer and designer. She is a graduate of the University of Missouri with a bachelor's in journalism.

Zach Goldfarb will helm the new department that we are now calling Futures, combining several areas of coverage with the aim of helping readers, listeners and viewers understand and act on major forces transforming the 21st century.

Futures will be a source of new beats, storytelling innovations and initiatives, and experiments that connect our journalism with a wider audience, exploring how profound shifts in these areas will affect people’s work, security, health and ability to serve as informed citizens in an ever more complex world.

A two-decade Post veteran, Zach was the founding editor of the Climate & Environment department, leading a team that created a new engine of journalistic impact and audience growth for The Post. Climate published memorable projects such as “The Human Limit,” which explored the impact of climate change on human health, and “The Drowning South,” an investigation into sea-level rise’s sudden acceleration in the southern U.S. With partners across the newsroom, the team produced leading coverage of Hurricane Helene and the L.A. wildfires. It launched a variety of new features including the Climate Coach column and the Climate Lab vertical.

Before Climate, Zach served as deputy business editor, helping oversee our coverage of business, technology and economics. In that role, he oversaw coverage of several major storylines during the first Trump administration and the Biden administration, including big economic debates and the pandemic response, and helped lead significant expansions in technology coverage and investigative reporting. The Business department won three Gerald Loeb Awards during his time, among other honors. Zach also served as policy editor for two years, overseeing the economics team and Wonkblog, a popular digital initiative.

As a reporter, Zach covered politics, economics and technology. He was a lead reporter on the 2008 financial crisis and its aftermath, and served for several years as an economics reporter and then a White House correspondent during the Obama administration. Zach joined The Post as a researcher on the politics staff. He is a graduate of Princeton University with a bachelor’s in public policy.

Please join me in congratulating and thanking Lori, Jenn and Zach as they take on new responsibilities and get to work driving our coverage forward.

We all know this is a period of change for The Post – and an exciting one with new opportunities. We are fortunate to have such talented, experienced leaders stepping up to the plate in these important departments at this critical time.