Armario to join California AP as education writer

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Christine Armario, a reporter for The Associated Press in Florida who has covered education, crime, politics and immigrant communities, is moving to the news cooperative's Los Angeles bureau.

Armario will focus on education in her new position, while contributing to other topics and breaking news. She starts Nov. 24.

The appointment was announced Monday by West Region Editor Traci Carl, who oversees news for 13 states.

“Christine is a talented journalist who understands key topic areas like education and immigration and knows how to break news,” Carl said. “She will bring a new perspective to our Los Angeles bureau.”

Armario, 32, joined the AP in Tampa, Florida, and has been in the Miami bureau since 2009.

As a member of AP’s national education team from 2009 to 2012, Armario covered the U.S. Department of Education, the creation of Common Core, and the Obama administration’s changes to No Child Left Behind. She broke numerous stories and wrote narrative pieces chronicling the costly impact of the financial crisis on students.

In 2012, she was sent to Honduras, where she covered the prison fire in Comayagua that left 360 inmates dead. It was the worst prison fire in at least a century.

Armario also has reported stories as part of AP’s coverage of the Newtown, Connecticut, school massacre; the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections; the death of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez; tropical storms and hurricanes. For the past two years, she has chronicled life in Miami’s large Cuban and Venezuelan communities.

Prior to joining the AP, Armario was a police reporter at Newsday. Her work earned her the New York Press Club’s Nellie Bly award as the city’s best young journalist.

Armario was born in Miami but grew up throughout the U.S., Europe and South America. She has a master’s degree from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and a bachelor’s from New York University in comparative literature and politics. She was a co-founder of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists’ South Florida chapter.