12/15/06

AP appointments announced for online and international photo operations

NEW YORK -- Lou Ferrara, The Associated Press's online editor, has been named deputy managing editor for multimedia in one of several new management assignments in the news cooperative's online and international photo operations.

In his newly created position, Ferrara will work with all news and business departments on planning special events and other coverage with an eye toward maximizing revenue opportunities and launching new products. His initial focus will be planned events, particularly in sports and entertainment. He will report to Managing Editor Mike Silverman.

Before joining the AP in May 2005, Ferrara was general manager of online and television news operations at the Sarasota (Fla.) Herald-Tribune.

In other moves, Steve Johnson, who joined the AP earlier this year from MSNBC.com, has been promoted from deputy online editor to online editor. He will continue to report to Ferrara. Also, Bud Weydert takes his decades-long expertise in managing special events for the AP from the Technology Department to the news department to assist Ferrara, to whom he'll report.

The photo assignments involve regional photo editors for Latin America and the Caribbean and for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, said Santiago Lyon, the AP's director of photography.

Enric Marti has been named to the newly created position of regional photo editor for Latin America and the Caribbean, to be based in Mexico City. Odd Andersen will be regional photo editor for Europe, Middle East and Africa.

Marti, of Barcelona, Spain, began working for the AP in 1994 in the Balkans and spent six years as AP's chief photographer for the Middle East, based in Cairo. For the last three years, he has been chief photo editor/photographer in Jerusalem.

He won a World Press Photo award for coverage of the 1998 Turkey earthquake and the Bayeux award for war photography for photos during Israeli incursions into the Gaza Strip.

Andersen begins work in February and will be based in London, succeeding Dimitri Messinis, who has returned to his former position in Athens as chief photographer for Greece and the Balkans.

Before joining the AP, Andersen was Agence France-Presse's chief photographer and photo editor based in London.

A native of Norway, Andersen started his career at the Dagbladet newspaper in Oslo in 1988. He later worked for AFP in South Africa and in Sarajevo during the Balkan wars.

The Associated Press, a cooperative owned by U.S. news organizations, was founded in 1846 and is the world's oldest and largest news agency.
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