Two award-winnning Newsweek foreign correspondents have changed posts. Bureau chief George Wehrfritz will move from Tokyo to Hong Kong and Moscow bureau chief Christain Caryl will take over the vacated Tokyo bureau.
The move is part of a routine fiveyear turnaround. Chief correspondent Marcus Mabry said: “It is important to move our international reporters from place to place on a regular basis, otherwise they go native and miss the big stories. Journalists need to see things with fresh eyes.”
Wehrfritz spent four years as bureau chief in Beijing and six in Tokyo. In Asia he won the Society of Publishers Excellence in Business Reporting Award 2003, the Overseas Press Club’s Ed Cunningham Memorial Award for best magazine reporting in 1996 and 1997 and the Population Institute’s award for best environmental reporting in 1995.
Mabry said: “George is the driving force in Asia. He has an excellent economic portfolio, no doubt he will apply that brillance to a more politically focused role in Hong Kong.”
The other veteran correspondent, Christain Caryl, will take up the bureau position in Tokyo next month. During his four years as Moscow bureau chief he chronicled the new Russia.
Mabry said: “From his new role, he will bring his extensive knowledge and skills to Japan, North and South Korea.”
Meanwhile, freelance correspondent Babak Dehghanpisheh has been named Baghdad correspondent. The postion was created after Babak spent a great deal of time as a major correspondent for Newsweek, reporting from war zones in the middle east.
Dehghanpisheh started at Newsweek as an unpaid intern.
He said: “I began as a runner in the Johannesburg bureau and then moved to New York in 2001. On 11 September I was one block away from the north tower of the World Trade Center. I contributed to Newsweek’s special issue on 9/11. Days after I was sent to report from Afganistan” Mabry said: “He was a contract stringer for three years. I have seen him mature from an intern into a great war correspondent.
“He has risked his life to get us stories and I am pleased we have the budget to finally bring him on as a fullyfledged staffer” He will continue to assist Baghdad bureau chief Rod Nordland in covering the American occupation and post-Saddam Iraq, as well as Iran and the Arab Middle East.
Dehghanpisheh said: “It has always been my goal to get this position.
There are some great stories to be covering, I am very excited.”
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