Kathleen Carroll, AP’s Top Editor, Stepping Down

NEW YORK (AP) — Kathleen Carroll, the executive editor of The Associated Press for the last 14 years, will leave her post at the end of the year.

The news was announced Wednesday by Gary Pruitt, president and chief executive officer of The AP. Pruitt said that Carroll will help with the leadership transition. A successor is expected to be in place by Jan. 1, 2017.

“Being the editor of the AP is the best job in journalism and maybe the best job anywhere, but it has never been a lifetime job. I’ve had a swell run and now it is someone else’s turn,” Carroll said in a statement.

Carroll, the former Washington bureau chief of Knight Ridder and a former writer and editor in four AP bureaus, was appointed in 2002. During her tenure, she helped establish bureaus in North Korea, Myanmar and Saudi Arabia and led the news cooperative’s transformation from analog to digital.

Under Carroll’s leadership, AP journalists won five Pulitzer Prizes – including the Pulitzer for Public Service, six George Polk Awards and 15 Overseas Press Club Awards.

She said her plans after leaving AP include some long-postponed trips with her husband and joining in the family events leading up to their son’s college graduation in the spring. “Plus, sleeping in on weekdays for a while,” she added.

Carroll championed the safety of all journalists and in July 2013 became the first journalist to address the United Nations Security Council about reporter safety. She currently serves as vice-chair of the Committee to Protect Journalists.

“If AP were a sports team, we would be retiring Kathleen’s number,” Pruitt said. “She has been a major force in shaping the modern AP as a global, multiformat news leader. Under Kathleen’s direction, AP produced not just the most comprehensive breaking news report in the world but also increasingly distinctive, investigative journalism.”