Cairo bureau changes: Fleishman to Hollywood, King to Egypt
Times Editor Davan Maharaj and Managing Editor Marc Duvoisin made two staff announcements regarding The Times’ Cairo bureau:
As a foreign correspondent, Jeff Fleishman has proved himself a master of the character study. With a jeweler’s eye for detail and a storyteller’s voice, he has brought to life a kaleidoscope of colorful personalities, from Saudi cineastes to Egyptian revolutionaries.
Now he’s taking on a new territory with no shortage of characters: Hollywood.
After 11 years abroad for The Times, the last six in Cairo, Jeff joins Calendar’s Arts & Entertainment team as a senior reporter. He will write across a broad range of topics in film, TV and the arts.
Before joining The Times in 2002, Jeff was Rome bureau chief for the Philadelphia Inquirer. He covered the Kosovo war and the black market in nuclear materials smuggled out of the former Soviet Union. In 1997, he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Feature Writing for what the judges described as “his versatile storytelling, notably including an account of the flight of 15 Buddhist monks from Tibet through the Himalayas.”
His first job at The Times was Berlin bureau chief. In addition to covering central Europe, he reported on the Iraq war and the rise of Al Qaeda. Jeff moved to Cairo in 2007, documenting the poverty, corruption and police abuse that would ignite the Arab Spring uprisings.
A former Nieman Fellow at Harvard, Jeff has published two novels (“Shadow Man” and “Promised Virgins: A Novel of Jihad”) and recently completed a third, “The Last Newspaperman.”
Please join us in welcoming Jeff to Hollywood.
And ...
We’re delighted to announce that Laura King, whose fearlessness, energy and analytic flair were sorely missed while she enjoyed a fellowship at Oxford, is back on duty for the Foreign staff as Cairo bureau chief.
In her 11 years at the Los Angeles Times, Laura has brought fortitude, keen perceptiveness and graceful writing to some of the most challenging international stories.
She started for The Times in Jerusalem in 2002 and moved to Istanbul four years later to take on a regional beat that included coverage of Pakistan and Afghanistan. Among her major stories was the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto
In 2009, she moved to Kabul to report on the Afghan conflict, a story well-suited to her skills at breaking news across platforms and her gift for making complex issues understandable.
Before joining The Times, Laura was a correspondent for the Associated Press in Washington, Tokyo and London. She covered conflicts in the Balkans, Lebanon, the West Bank, Gaza and East Timor. She is a graduate of UC-Davis and holds a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Oregon.
We’re excited to have her distinctive voice and writing back in the newspaper and on latimes.com.
