• Submitted by: manso
• Editorial Articles
• 03 / 15 / 2011

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By The Associated Press, Monday, March 14. MEXICO CITY — The Associated Press has appointed Trenton Daniel, a former reporter for The Miami Herald, as its correspondent in Haiti, and has named Peter Orsi, an editor on its Latin America regional news desk, to its bureau in Havana.

The news cooperative also announced it is expanding its Spanish translation staff in New York and Mexico City to serve the growing market for news in Spanish throughout the Americas.

“These changes support the AP’s commitment to provide fast, essential coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean to all of its members and clients around the world,” said Senior Managing Editor John Daniszewski, who oversees AP’s international news and photos.

Daniel, 36, assumed his post in Port-au-Prince on Sunday. A Creole-speaker, he has been writing about Haiti since 2000, and spent much of the last year there as a reporter for The Herald covering the aftermath of the January 2010 earthquake, the stalled reconstruction efforts and the ensuing political turmoil.

He received a bachelor’s degree from Reed College in Portland, Oregon, and a master of science in journalism from Columbia University.

Daniel joined The Herald in 2003. He covered the ouster of Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, several hurricanes that struck Haiti as well as shootings and zoning board meetings in Florida. In 2009, Daniel spent two months in Iraq, where he wrote about provincial elections and the U.S. military.

He was a 2003 fellow with the International Reporting Project in Washington, for which he traveled to Nigeria. His first overseas assignment was in Haiti in 2000, as a stringer for Reuters.

“We’re thrilled to have Trenton,” said Latin America and Caribbean Editor Marjorie Miller. “With his deep knowledge of Haiti and many sources in the country, he’ll hit the ground running just in time for the upcoming presidential election.”

Daniel succeeds Jonathan Katz, the only Haitian-based reporter for an American news organization at the time of the earthquake, whose reporting provided the first information about the extent of the devastation. Katz has completed five years in Haiti and the Dominican Republic and is awaiting his next assignment.

Orsi, 37, will report to AP’s Havana Chief of Bureau Paul Haven. A fluent Spanish-speaker, Orsi joined the news cooperative in 2005 on the Latin America desk in Mexico City and has reported from Cuba, Mexico, Argentina and Paraguay.

Before starting at AP, Orsi worked for Business 2.0 and Sunset magazines in California. A native of Fremont, California, he holds bachelor’s degrees in English and Spanish from the University of California, Davis, and a master’s degree in journalism from the University of California, Berkeley.

He is to arrive in Havana this month to succeed Will Weissert, who is now based in San Antonio, Texas, for the AP.

“Peter is a careful reporter and writer,” Miller said. “He will bring an editor’s eye to Cuba as the country moves away and undergoes a period of change with the opening up of its controlled economy. He’ll be a tremendous asset to a strong bureau.”

The AP also has added a Spanish-language reporter in New York and a deputy sports editor in Mexico, as well as four new editor-translators.

Claudia Torrens, 32, will cover immigrant communities in New York City, labor issues, and arts and entertainment. A native of Barcelona, Spain, Torrens has extensive experience covering ethnic and multicultural communities. Before joining AP, she covered the immigration beat for the MetroWest Daily News in Massachusetts, as well as for New York News 1. She joined the AP in 2008 as an editor-translator.

Diego Graglia, 35, also has a journalism degree from Columbia, and has worked for the AP as a translator since 2009. He will help improve the quality and quantity of stories for the sports report in Spanish.

The AP’s new general news editor-translators are Gabriela Lopez, Rafael Carballo and Jesus Sierra of Mexico, and Santiago Torrado of Colombia.

The Spanish language service is seeking to increase coverage of sports, entertainment, Hispanics in the United States and regional stories from various Latin American bureaus.

“We are working very hard to deliver more stories more quickly to the Spanish-language market,” said Alejandro Manrique, the deputy Latin America editor who oversees the Spanish service. “Our new editors and translators have ample experience in Latin America and the United States, and we expect they will make a significant contribution to our coverage.”

Source: www.washingtonpost.com/world/ap-names-reporters