Sally Buzbee will be The Washington Post's first woman executive editor.
Buzbee was appointed on Tuesday, and she will take charge on June 1. Buzbee is, of course, defined by so much more than her gender. As the Post's CEO Fred Ryan said, Buzbee, has an 'exceptional record of achievement and a tremendous wealth of experience in leading a global news organization.' She joined the AP in 1988 and worked as a reporter and then a bureau chief before taking on more senior leadership roles, including executive editor there.
But Buzbee's appointment is also the latest in a series of monumental leadership changes across media, bringing more diversity to the top of major news outlets. Last month Alessandra Galloni became the first female editor of Reuters. And on Monday Kimberly Godwin became president at ABC News, the first woman and the first Black person to hold that position. Women leaders are also running CBS News, USA Today, MSNBC, The Guardian, The Economist, the Financial Times, Politico, and the newsroom at NPR, among others.
It's important to call attention to the history-making nature of Buzbee's hire. In some ways, the Post is coming full circle, since the paper's publisher Katherine Graham was a trailblazer in the 1960s and 70s.
In an interview with The New York Times, Buzbee said it is a "huge honor" to be the first woman to lead the Post newsroom, but also acknowledged the women who came before her.
"I am grateful to them pretty much every day of my life because I know that it took work and guts, and I really do feel that they paved the way for things that are happening now," she said.
It's also important to add more nuance to this milestone. As former Post reporter Wesley Lowery tweeted, "Given the barriers, women still face in our industry, it is unquestionably a big deal (even as it remains true that representation alone isn't enough to guarantee those barriers are torn down)." And putting a woman in charge won't automatically fix any cultural problems inside a news organization or in its coverage.
