AP Names Julie Pace To Be Top Editor

Julie Pace

Julie Pace, a longtime Washington journalist who managed coverage of the U.S. government during a period of historic tumult, was named Wednesday as the executive editor and senior vice president of The Associated Press.

The 39-year-old Pace has been the AP’s Washington bureau chief since 2017, guiding reporting on the Trump administration, national security, politics and the new Biden White House. She rose to the newsroom’s top leadership spot with a promise to accelerate the AP’s digital transformation.

Pace succeeds Sally Buzbee, who became executive editor of The Washington Post in June, and is the third consecutive woman to lead the AP’s worldwide news operation. Her appointment is effective immediately and was announced by Gary Pruitt, AP president and CEO, and Daisy Veerasingham, executive vice president and chief operating officer. Veerasingham will become president and chief executive at the end of the year.

“This is a very exciting time for the AP — we’re a 175-year-old news organization with a new CEO and a new executive editor,” Pruitt said. “Julie Pace has a vision for AP’s future that is in line with our long-standing values but also forward-thinking. She will do an excellent job.”

As she assumes her new role, Pace said it was important to push all of the AP’s journalists — text reporters, video, still photographers, fact checkers and graphics producers — out of individual silos to work together in presenting compelling stories.

“We are in a position where we have an opportunity to really modernize our news report,” Pace said in an interview. “We have an opportunity to take all of the fantastic journalism that we do across formats and think of ways we can make it more digital-friendly, to make it more social-friendly.”

Breaking news will remain the backbone of the AP’s report, but journalists will quickly move to provide analysis, context and fact-checking to those stories, she said.