03/17/2005

DeSilva, Schwartz, Dowling named to new AP posts

NEW YORK -- Bruce DeSilva, editor of AP NewsFeatures since 1995, has been named writing coach for The Associated Press, and AP National Writer Jerry Schwartz has been appointed as his successor. John Dowling, deputy director of editorial training, has been named director of state news training.

Their appointments were announced March 17 by Kathleen Carroll, AP senior vice president and executive editor.

Carroll said DeSilva will "help burnish our storytelling among writers and editors around the world," coaching individuals, running workshops and editing some projects.

DeSilva frequently speaks and leads workshops on writing and editing, including the National Writers Workshops and the Nieman Narrative Writing Conference at Harvard University. He also has been a consultant on writing, editing, storytelling and newsroom management for newspapers.

Before joining the AP, he worked as a reporter and editor for The Providence Journal and as a regional and national writer for The Hartford Courant, where he also was associate editor for writing and editing. He is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts and was a fellow in the Fellowships for Journalists program at the University of Michigan.

Schwartz takes charge of the AP department dedicated to producing longer-form national enterprise. He joined the AP in 1977 as a reporter and editor in the New York City bureau.

He later was special projects editor and has been a national writer since 1997. His stories have been wide-ranging; he has profiled a 63-year-old man with Down syndrome in a small Indiana town, examined divisiveness in America and delved into the world of telephone psychics.

Schwartz is the author of "The AP Reporting Handbook," published by McGraw-Hill in 2001. Winner of an AP Gramling Spirit Award in 2004, he also was a Larry Foster Fellow in journalism at Penn State, where he graduated with degrees in journalism and history.

Dowling will work with Sarah Nordgren, director of state news, to develop training programs geared to reaching the AP's goals for its state news reports.

For the past five years, Dowling has been deputy to Barbara King, AP's director of editorial training, who is retiring.

He began his AP career in 1979 as an office assistant in Chicago and worked as a newsman there and in the AP's statehouse bureau in Springfield, Ill., before being named correspondent in charge of the Springfield bureau in 1988. He later was news editor in Minneapolis and in Chicago.

Dowling is a native of Elmhurst, Ill., and earned bachelor's and master's degrees from Northwestern University.

Contact: Jack Stokes, AP Corporate Communications, 212.621.1720