AP Paris bureau chief Deborah Seward named assistant managing editor for AP’s News Center

Deborah Seward named AP assistant managing editor

NEW YORK — Deborah Seward, the Paris bureau chief for The Associated Press, has been named an assistant managing editor for the news cooperative.

The appointment was announced Tuesday by Senior Managing Editor Mike Oreskes.

Seward will help oversee the AP News Center, a headquarters operation in New York that works closely with AP’s regional and department leaders worldwide to deliver competitive coverage across all media formats.

The center also works with other parts of the AP Nerve Center on new storytelling methods and content for new products and devices to engage the changing habits of readers and viewers.

“Debbie brings strong news experience, plus a sharp awareness of how AP’s customers worldwide use and interact with our journalism in all forms,” Oreskes said.

As Paris chief of bureau since January 2009, Seward, 53, an expert on European affairs, also had supervisory oversight of AP bureau chiefs in Brussels and Amsterdam.

Seward began her AP career in Warsaw, Poland, in 1988, and has held a number of positions in the cooperative, including serving as bureau chief in Moscow from 2000 to 2003 and as international editor of the AP from 2003 to 2005.

She left for one year to direct the Central Newsroom of Radio Free Europe/Liberty in Prague, where she supervised convergence of that organization’s broadcast and English-language website operations. She returned to the AP as a special international editor in 2007 and assumed leadership of the Paris bureau in 2009.

A Connecticut native, Seward earned her bachelor’s degree in history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1978, followed by graduate studies at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques in Paris. She was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University in 1996.