Alix M. Freedman has been named Global Editor for Ethics and Standards at Reuters. She comes from the Wall Street Journal, where she was deputy managing editor and page one editor. Before that she oversaw ethics and standards of high-impact stories in the paper and on the Dow Jones newswires. Ms. Freedman won a Pulitzer for her tobacco industry reporting. Full memo from editor in chief Steve Adler below.
Colleagues:
I’m thrilled to announce that Alix M. Freedman, one of the world’s most esteemed journalists, is joining Reuters as Global Editor for Ethics and Standards. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for her extraordinary investigative coverage of the tobacco industry, Freedman was most recently Deputy Managing Editor and Page One Editor at The Wall Street Journal. Previously at The Journal, she was responsible for overseeing ethics and standards and supervising final-reading of high-impact stories in the newspaper and on the Dow Jones Newswires.
At Reuters, Alix will help fuel our drive for journalistic excellence by working closely with reporters and editors on major stories, final-reading many signature pieces, and holding us all to the high standards set out in the Thomson Reuters Trust Principles and the Reuters Handbook of Journalism. A long-time leader of ethics training at the Journal, Alix will also collaborate with our training team to make sure we provide the best possible instruction. She will report to me and serve as a member of Reuters senior leadership group.
Alix has spent much of her illustrious career as a reporter, with a keen focus on topics that require unusual reporting skill, courage, and dedication and that – in her hands – have produced stories of enormous resonance and enduring impact. Among her many reporting highlights:
- · Her 1998 story, “Population Bomb,” an astonishing account of how two American contraceptive researchers arranged for chemical sterilization of more than 100,000 women in developing nations. It won a George Polk Award and was a Pulitzer finalist.
- · “Fire Power,” a 1992 examination of how a secretive Southern California family dominated the market for low-priced handguns frequently used in crimes. It won the Gerald Loeb Award, one of Alix’s two reporting Loebs.
- · Reports revealing little-known ways that Saddam Hussein profited from the United Nations sanctions meant to punish him, stories that made her and a colleague 2002 Pulitzer finalists.
- · High-impact on-the-ground coverage of child soldiers in Sierra Leone who were conscripted by rebels and then branded to discourage desertion. In 2003, Alix and a colleague also probed the failure of U.N. peacekeepers as a war-torn town in the Congo stood on the brink of genocide.
In December 2003, New York Women in Communications, Inc., named Alix winner of their 2004 Matrix Award in the newspaper category. She is also winner of the 2010 Lawrence Minard Editor Award, the Loeb’s special distinction for career achievement among business editors.
She is a graduate of Harvard University with a bachelor’s degree in history and literature.
Please join me in welcoming Alix to our team.
Best regards,
Steve
