Michael Giarrusso named AP bureau chief for Arizona and New Mexico
By APFriday, May 28, 2010
Giarrusso named AP bureau chief for Ariz., NM
PHOENIX — Michael Giarrusso, a state news director for The Associated Press, has been named chief of bureau for Arizona and New Mexico.
The appointment was announced Friday by Kate Lee Butler, vice president for U.S. Newspaper Markets. Giarrusso succeeds Michelle Williams, who became chief of bureau for the South Atlantic region in March.
Giarrusso will oversee AP’s news and business operations in the two states. He will be based in Phoenix.
“Michael is a skilled and experienced journalist who brings insight and fresh ideas about news and how its delivery and consumption is changing to his work in Arizona and New Mexico,” Butler said.
Giarrusso, 40, began his AP career in 1992 as an intern in the Atlanta bureau. He worked as a reporter in Atlanta, correspondent in State College, Pa., and editor on the AP’s national editing desk in New York. From 1998 to 2003, he was news editor for Georgia. He became state news director for the South in 2003, overseeing news operations in the 14-state region. He added oversight for the West region last year.
From 2007 to 2009, Giarrusso led the U.S. regionalization project, working with a large multi-department team to create a new regional filing structure that moved editing functions out of New York and the state bureaus and into four regional filing centers. In 2008, he won the AP’s highest internal honor, the Gramling Award, for his work in the reorganization.
Giarrusso is a graduate of the University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication. In 2000, he won the college’s John E. Drewry Award for early career achievement. In 2008, he was a fellow in Columbia University’s Punch Sulzberger Executive News Media Leadership Program.
