POLITICO announces Transatlantic Security Team

Announcement from POLITICO Global Editor-in-Chief John  Harris, POLITICO Europe Editor-in-Chief Jamil Anderlini, POLITICO Head of News Alex Burns, and POLITICO Deputy Head of News Grace Maalouf:

As we approach an unpredictable pivot point in global politics this winter, we are excited to announce a series of moves to strengthen our international report and compete even more aggressively in the arena of defense and security policy. These steps build on the work we have all done in recent years, and especially over the last year, to build POLITICO’s identity as a transatlantic news organization.

We have already shown the value of joining forces across the ocean to compete on the most urgent storylines of our time, including the struggle against climate change, the wars in Ukraine and Israel and the political crises facing democratic systems across North America and Europe. Our global audience team has bolstered our competitiveness on all fronts, bringing a new level of sophistication and rigor to POLITICO’s editorial strategy.

The next phase of POLITICO’s evolution will involve much tighter relationships between our reporters on our European and American teams. Our journalism is built on a powerful combination of deep and localized sourcing, specialized expertise and high-altitude analytical insight. Forging a tighter bond between journalists across all our geographies will improve our newsgathering capacity everywhere and help us deliver the most authoritative policy coverage for subscribers of any outlet on the planet.

Dave Brown will take lead responsibility for crafting a global coverage plan for defense and security policy, and Heidi Vogt and Rosie Perper will take on new or expanded roles overseeing crucial elements of that report. They will work in even closer partnership with Jan Cienski, the defense editor in Europe who is a vital leader in POLITICO’s transatlantic security coverage.

This move reflects the vision for Politico as a global agenda-setter that John has articulated for the past year, in close concert with Jamil. We all recognize that driving storylines across the Atlantic presents some distinct organizational challenges and will require some changes of habit and mindset.

We must do two things at once: own the regional story on behalf of a regional audience — subscribers above all — and give those audiences even more by connecting different regions. This is complex work, and will surely involve growing pains, but everything we have learned makes us confident it is worth it.

Dave Brown – Deputy Managing Editor, Global Security

With this promotion, Dave takes on primary responsibility for overseeing POLITICO’s coverage of international defense and security issues — and it becomes his mission, in collaboration with newsroom leadership, to craft a detailed global editorial strategy for both subscription and homepage-facing news. He will manage all reporters and editors in North America covering defense, security and foreign affairs, and he will be the chief author and executor of a plan for fully integrating these teams across the Atlantic.

He will report to Alex Burns and directly supervise three editors leading teams, including a new defense editor who will be announced in the coming weeks.

Dave is an imaginative leader and an expert editor who has masterminded our report in challenging moments from the 10/7 massacre to the high-wire NATO summit this summer. He combines an extraordinary depth of subject-matter knowledge with an instinct for big-swing narration and news analysis. It is a rare editor who can reel off ship classes, tabloid-style headline puns and penetrating policy criticism, all in the same breath. He coined the term “Bombenonics” to capture the White House’s made-in-America sales pitch for Ukraine weapons aid, and authored the “Mar-a-NATO” headline describing the MAGA diplomacy of world leaders in Washington over the summer.

As his colleagues know, Dave is also the most gracious of colleagues and, to use his vernacular, one heck of a nice guy.

Heidi Vogt – Foreign Affairs Editor

Heidi has been one of the most important drivers of POLITICO’s transatlantic journalism in her two years as National Security Editor, working across teams in the American newsroom and in tandem with top editors in Brussels, London and even with Axel Springer partners like WELT. In recent months she has directed coverage of complex international stories like the prisoner swap with Russia and negotiations for a cease-fire in Gaza.

In a new, more globalized configuration of defense and security coverage, Heidi will take on an enhanced mandate to deliver on a specific mission: to drive an ambitious reporting agenda focused on diplomacy and intelligence in the United States and beyond. Reporting to Dave, Heidi will continue to supervise a team of reporters in Washington, including the flagship Nat Sec Daily newsletter, and be one of the lead editors coordinating work with our European colleagues.

Heidi’s team is already a case study in how we are strengthening our coverage of these subjects: Earlier this year, Nahal Toosi launched her enthralling column, Compass, and this month the NSD newsletter relaunched with a stellar new anchor, Robbie Gramer, who joined us from Foreign Policy.

We look forward to much more of this in the coming months.

Rosie Perper – Cybersecurity Editor

Since joining POLITICO as a news editor last spring, Rosie has become an indispensable partner to editors and reporters across the newsroom. She has handled fast-moving campaign stories, helped manage coverage of Iran’s massive drone attack on Israel and led the launch of the Toplines newsletter for registered users. She has worked in particularly close collaboration with the Defense and Nat Sec teams, editing stories and newsletters both behind and beyond the paywall.

An experienced international journalist who has reported from Israel and Australia – including on issues of technology and national security – Rosie told us from the start that she wanted to lead a team here when the time was right. That time is now: We’ve asked her to manage the Cyber team as a free-standing unit within our global security coverage. She will report to Dave, also working with Heidi and counterparts in Europe.

This move reflects our trust in Rosie and in the Cyber team, which sits at a nexus of important policy challenges that affect nearly everything we cover, from election tampering and digital warfare to energy security and medical privacy. Our Cyber reporters do a superb job covering these subjects, particularly for subscribers. With a dedicated editor, this coverage will reach a new level of competitiveness and impact.

In addition to Dave, Heidi and Rosie, a fourth editor will join this defense and security squad, filling Dave’s former role as Defense Editor. This is editing firepower akin to what we deploy in a presidential campaign. That is the level of strategic importance we attach to globalizing our defense coverage, and doing it with precision and care — and in constant collaboration with our European newsroom.

Please congratulate our colleagues on these important roles.