03/22/06

John Daniszewski returns to AP as International Editor

NEW YORK -- John Daniszewski, a longtime international correspondent, has been named International Editor of The Associated Press.

Daniszewski has spent the past 19 years abroad for the AP and for the Los Angeles Times, covering some of the most significant social and political changes of our time plus a number of the conflicts in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

His appointment was announced March 22 by Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll and Managing Editor Mike Silverman.

For the past decade, Daniszewski has been a Times correspondent in Cairo, Moscow, Baghdad and most recently, bureau chief in London. In 2003, he was based in Baghdad, staying through the U.S. invasion, the toppling of Saddam Hussein's government and the unrest that followed.

Before joining the Times, Daniszewski spent 16 years with the AP, starting as a stringer while a student at the University of Pennsylvania. After graduation, he joined AP in 1979 in Philadelphia and worked in Harrisburg and on the national and international editing desks in New York before moving to Warsaw as correspondent in 1985. In 1993, he was named AP bureau chief in South Africa.

"John is an extremely talented journalist who has spent nearly two decades explaining a complex and changing world to readers," Carroll said. "He is a splendid writer and leader. And he carries one very well-stamped passport."

For the AP, Daniszewski covered the collapse of communism in Poland -- a precursor to the end of communism throughout Eastern Europe -- and the election of President Nelson Mandela and the assumption of black majority rule in South Africa.

In 1989, he was shot in the arm and seriously wounded at a checkpoint while covering the overthrow of Nicolae Ceausescu in Romania.

In addition to the war in Iraq, Daniszewski has covered conflicts in Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Chechnya and the aftermaths of civil war in Rwanda and Angola.

Daniszewski grew up in Centreville, Ohio, and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a bachelor's degree in economics from the Wharton School.

He replaces Deborah Seward, who resigned to return to Europe.

Contact: Jack Stokes, AP Corporate Communications, 212.621.1730