12/02/05

Hawaii added to responsibilities of John Raess, AP bureau chief in San Francisco

NEW YORK -- John Raess, chief of bureau for The Associated Press in northern California and northern Nevada, is adding Hawaii to his responsibilities as part of a regional restructuring of the news cooperative's management.

Raess succeeds David Briscoe, who will remain based in Honolulu as the bureau's news editor. The appointment was announced Dec. 2 by John O. Lumpkin, vice president of business operations for the AP's Newspaper & New Media Markets department.

Raess has been bureau chief in San Francisco since last December and was the region's assistant chief of bureau during the year prior to that. He joined the AP in December 2003 from TheStreet.com, where for three years he was West Coast bureau chief and deputy managing editor handling business and technology news.

He began his journalism career at the Peninsula Times Tribune in Palo Alto, Calif. He later became an assistant metro editor, city editor and deputy managing editor at The Oakland Tribune, where he directed coverage of the Loma Prieta earthquake, for which the Tribune won a Pulitzer Prize for spot photography.

He spent six years at the San Jose Mercury News directing Bay-area bureaus, specialist teams and investigations. A graduate of San Jose State, Raess is on the board of the California First Amendment Coalition.

Briscoe has overseen the AP's Hawaii operation since 2001. He joined the cooperative in Manila in 1970 after serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Philippines for three years. He transferred to Salt Lake City a year later and served as news editor there for four years.

Briscoe returned to Manila in 1980 and served as bureau chief until 1986 when he transferred to Washington; he was named the AP's World Services supervisor in 1994.

Briscoe succeeds Janis Magin, who has left the company.

Contact: Jack Stokes, AP Corporate Communications, 212.621.1720