AP names 2 chiefs of bureau: Katherine Corcoran for Mexico, Bradley Brooks for Brazil

Corcoran, Brooks named chiefs of bureau for AP

NEW YORK — Katherine Corcoran, The Associated Press’ enterprise editor for Latin America and the Caribbean, has been named chief of bureau for Mexico and Central America for the news cooperative, and Bradley Brooks, the AP’s correspondent in Rio de Janeiro since 2008, has been named chief of bureau for Brazil.

The appointments to lead coverage in Latin America’s two biggest countries were announced Monday by John Daniszewski, senior managing editor for international news and photos.

Corcoran and Brooks will report to Niko Price, the AP’s Latin America editor in Mexico City.

“Kathy Corcoran has been a key part of our award-winning coverage of the drug war, and this new role will allow her to enhance coverage of that story, as well as others at the center of the news agenda in Latin America and the United States,” Price said.

“Brad Brooks’ talent at telling great stories with a combination of text and images, as well as his deep understanding of Brazil and Brazilians, makes him an ideal leader to drive coverage of the fascinating story that Brazil has become,” he added.

Daniszewski said the two will be key to driving AP’s news report in Latin America.

“Brazil and Mexico embody the rising economic and political influence of Latin America, which affects people in the United States and around the world,” he said. “We are pleased to appoint two such highly qualified new leaders to these important posts.”

Corcoran, 51, will lead the AP’s Mexico City bureau, which oversees offices in Mexico and six Central American countries.

She joined the AP as an editor on the Latin America Desk in January 2008 after a career as a reporter and editor at newspapers including the San Jose Mercury News, the Denver Post and the San Francisco Chronicle. In August 2009 she was promoted to enterprise editor for the region.

A graduate of the University of Notre Dame, she also taught journalism at Stanford University and at the University of California at Berkeley, where she developed an innovative program in community journalism.

Brooks, 35, has held a variety of jobs around the world for the AP, and has extensive experience in Brazil. He will lead coverage of Latin America’s largest country as it prepares for presidential elections in October, the World Cup in 2014 and the Olympics in 2016.

Brooks joined the AP in 1998 in Kansas City, then moved to New York the following year as an editor in its Multimedia department. He left the cooperative in 2001 to move to South America, where he served as editor-in-chief of the Santiago Times in Chile and opened a South America bureau for United Press International from a base in Rio.

He returned in 2005 as an editor in New York, working on desks handling both U.S. and international news, and did a six-month reporting stint in Iraq before returning to Brazil as Rio correspondent in 2008. He has been acting chief of bureau since June.

Brooks will be based in Sao Paulo, leading AP staff there as well as in Rio de Janeiro and Brasilia. He holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Kansas and a master’s degree in International Affairs from Columbia University in New York.

Corcoran succeeds Traci Carl, who became the AP’s Phoenix-based West editor last year, while Brooks takes over from Alan Clendenning, who was named AP’s chief of bureau in Madrid.

(This version CORRECTS that Brazilian elections are in October, not in November.)