AP names Adam Schreck as bureau chief in Iraq

CAIRO (AP) — Adam Schreck, who has covered the economic and political forces reshaping the Middle East since 2008, has been named as Iraq bureau chief for The Associated Press.

The appointment was announced Tuesday by acting Middle East Editor Dan Perry.

Schreck, 36, replaces Lara Jakes, who transferred to AP’s Washington, D.C., bureau.

From his base in Baghdad, Schreck will lead a team of more than 30 reporters, photographers, video journalists and support staff covering Iraq as the nation seeks to maintain stability and overcome ethnic and sectarian divisions a year after the withdrawal of most U.S. military forces.

“Adam is a thoughtful and aggressive journalist whose regional experience and business news background make him perfect for leading multifaceted coverage of an oil-rich nation which finds itself on the vanguard of the Arab world’s transition,” said Perry.

Schreck has filed stories from more than a dozen countries, as well as U.S. Navy ships on patrol in the Persian Gulf.

He joined the AP’s business news desk in New York in 2007, covering energy, airlines and corporate news. A year later, he was named as a correspondent in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, responsible for business news coverage across the Gulf region. His reporting assignments have included work in Afghanistan and multiple trips to Iraq, and in 2011 he spent a month in Tripoli anchoring AP’s text coverage of the Libyan civil war and the NATO-led aerial bombardment.

During his time in the Gulf, Schreck reported on the growing influence of the region’s airlines and multibillion-dollar sovereign wealth funds, as well as mounting concerns about Dubai’s economy ahead of its 2009 financial crisis and the fallout that followed. He covered OPEC meetings in Africa, the opening of the world’s tallest skyscraper, a 2010 package-bomb terror plot and, from the sultanate of Oman, the release of an American hiker held in an Iranian prison.

A native of Bourbonnais, Illinois, Schreck graduated from Loyola University Chicago in 1998 and earned a master’s degree from the University of Missouri School of Journalism in 2007. He is the recipient of the school’s 2006 Atwater Prize, awarded in part for his reporting work from Mississippi following Hurricane Katrina.