04/12/2005

AP assistant chiefs of bureau named for Miami, San Francisco

NEW YORK -- The Associated Press has promoted San Diego Correspondent Michelle Morgante to assistant chief of bureau for Florida, and named Ken Chavez, deputy city editor of The Sacramento Bee, to assistant bureau chief for Northern California and Nevada.

The appointments were announced April 7 by Kevin Walsh, chief of bureau for Florida, and John Raess, chief of bureau in San Francisco.

Morgante joined the AP in 1991 as an intern in Detroit and moved to the Denver bureau in 1992. She left in 1993 to teach English and work for a bilingual newspaper in Mazatlan, Mexico, then rejoined the AP in Portland, Ore., in 1995. She became an editor on the AP's International Desk in New York the next year.

In 1998, she was posted to Mexico City, reporting in cities across Mexico and in Panama, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Cuba and Colombia. She was named correspondent in San Diego in 2000. In Miami, she succeeds Adam Yeomans, who was named chief of bureau for Tennessee.

A native of Lindsay, Calif., Morgante is a graduate of the University of California-Santa Barbara. She is a founding member of the AP Diversity Council and is active in the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and The California Chicano News Media Association.

Chavez has been an editor at the Bee since 1997. He joined the Bee in 1989 as a night police reporter. He rose to become a state political reporter and covered the governor's office for four years, including Gov. Pete Wilson's campaign for the GOP presidential nomination and California ballot measures on affirmative action and illegal immigration.

A native of Colton, Calif., Chavez graduated from Stanford University. Before joining the Bee, he worked at the Greenwich Time in Connecticut, and the Los Angeles Times.

He succeeds Raess in San Francisco.

Contact: Jack Stokes, AP Corporate Communications, 212.621.1720