PHOTO: Arlene Getz
New York–The Committee to Protect Journalists is pleased to announce that Arlene Getz will be CPJ’s new editorial director, where she will lead the organization’s editorial team and oversee news, data, and multimedia production, the CPJ said on Tuesday, August 24, 2021.
“Arlene’s extensive experience in reporting and editing international news will help CPJ meet the unprecedented and growing challenges to press freedom and journalists’ safety globally,” said Robert Mahoney, CPJ’s deputy executive director. “We have record levels of journalists in prison, creeping authoritarianism and censorship, and vicious online harassment of reporters. To battle these and other threats we need to uphold the highest standards of reporting and editing to underpin our public advocacy. Arlene and her team of expert editors are the ones to do it.”
Prior to joining CPJ, Getz was an opinion editor at CNN, an editor-in-charge at Reuters, a managing editor at Newsweek Online, and editorial director of Newsweek’s worldwide editions, serving as the top editorial executive for publications in Russia, Turkey, Pakistan, Poland, Mexico, Kuwait, South Korea, and Japan. Getz is also fostering a new generation of journalists as an adjunct professor at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.
She is a member of the Council of Foreign Relations, a Fulbright Specialist, and has been awarded various fellowships, including Wolfson Press Fellow at Cambridge University and the International Reporting Project’s Gatekeeper Fellowships to the Middle East. Getz’s work has earned her several awards for reporting and commentary.
“I’m absolutely thrilled to join the terrific team at CPJ. I was a journalist in South Africa when the apartheid government tried to stop us from reporting on their abuses, so I’ve always understood the importance of a free press. I’ve also never forgotten how much it meant to me and my colleagues to know that organizations like CPJ were keeping an eye out for us,” said Getz. “I feel awed and honored that my new role gives me the opportunity to support other journalists telling the stories that need to be told.”
Read more of CPJ’s latest news alerts, features, and special reports on our website. To get the latest from CPJ in your inbox, sign up for email alerts here.