03/19/07

Beth Duff-Brown, Ken Moritsugu named to senior AP posts in Asia

NEW YORK -- Beth Duff-Brown, who has reported from three continents for The Associated Press, has been named deputy editor for the Asia-Pacific region and veteran newspaper correspondent Ken Moritsugu will become enterprise editor.

The appointments are part of an expanded senior editorial team at the regional headquarters in Bangkok, Thailand.

International Editor John Daniszewski announced the appointments Monday.

"The AP's reporting from the region will benefit from the addition of these two strong editors, particularly as the AP looks to expand its coverage of China and other Asia-Pacific stories," said Daniszewski.

Duff-Brown, chief of bureau in Canada since 2004, is a former chief of bureau in New Delhi and led AP's coverage of India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal for three years.

She joined the AP in 1990 in Miami and transferred to the International Desk two years later. In 1995, she was posted to Abidjan, Ivory Coast, and covered civil wars in Zaire, now Congo, Sierra Leone and Liberia.

In 1997, Duff-Brown was named chief of bureau in Malaysia and covered the Asian economic crisis and tumult in Malaysian politics. She moved on to India in 2000.

Before joining the agency, Brown was a reporter at newspapers in Florida, spent two years in the Peace Corps in Africa, and worked in China as an editor and freelance reporter. She has a master's degree in journalism from Northwestern University.

Moritsugu was part of a Newsday team that won the Pulitizer Prize in 1997 for best newspaper writing for coverage of a TWA jetliner crash. He worked for the Long Island-based daily from 1994 to 2000, then joined Knight-Ridder in Washington as national economics correspondent with assignments in Afghanistan, Japan, Britain and Germany.

Since 2004, Moritsugu has lived in New Delhi and contributed stories to the former Knight-Ridder chain and USA Today, including coverage of the Indian Ocean tsunami, U.S.-India relations and terrorism. He is a graduate of Princeton University.

Duff-Brown and Moritsugu will report to Asia-Pacific Editor Patrick McDowell in Bangkok.

"Beth and Ken are highly experienced, talented journalists and will bring outstanding writing and editing skills to Asia," McDowell said. "They will enhance a dynamic, competitive report with an eye to focused coverage and incisive, must-read stories that have global impact."

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