Stephanie Flanders, economics editor for Newsnight, will be appointed the BBC‘s new economics editor in April following Evan Davis’s move to Radio 4’s Today programme.
Flanders, a former New York Times reporter and leader writer for the Financial Times between 1994 and 1997, was a speech writer and senior advisor to the United States Treasury from 1997 to 2001.
She was principal editor of the United Nations’ 2002 Human Development Report in New York before being becoming economics correspondent for Newsnight in the same year.
Flanders said: ‘Evan is unique – and not an act that any sensible person would want to follow. But then nor is BBC economics editor a job that you turn down. I’m thrilled. And I am almost as tall as him, which helps.”
Jeremy Hillman, the editor of BBC News’s economics and business centre, said: ‘Stephanie has a formidable track record as an economist and journalist. She will bring huge depth and insight to the role at a time of significant global and domestic economic uncertainty.”
Helen Boaden, the director of BBC News, said Flanders would bring ‘clarity, authority and wry humour to this important but difficult area”.
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