Pomfret Named Editor of Post's Outlook
Saturday, January 27, 2007; Page A04
John Pomfret, a prize-winning reporter and foreign correspondent who has studied Chinese in China and judo in Japan and covered hot spots including Bosnia, the Congo and Afghanistan during a 25-year journalism career, was named yesterday to become editor of The Washington Post's Outlook Section.
The Post's executive editor, Leonard Downie Jr., and managing editor, Philip Bennett, called Pomfret, 47, "one of the great foreign correspondents of his generation."
Describing his tenure as The Post's correspondent in Beijing as an "extraordinary tour," the editors said Pomfret "arguably exercised an influence over coverage and perceptions of China greater than any American journalist" in the past half-century.
For the past 18 months, Pomfret, a former Fulbright scholar in Singapore who holds bachelor's and master's degrees from Stanford University, has been The Post's West Coast bureau chief. As head of Outlook, which is published Sundays and offers in-depth discussions of public issues by specialists inside and outside the newspaper, he will hold the title of associate editor.
In his new role, which starts the first week in April, Pomfret succeeds Susan Glasser, who is assistant managing editor for national news.
In an interview, Pomfret praised the work of Glasser and her predecessor, Steven Luxenberg, and said he hoped to have fun and make Outlook "even more interesting than it already is."
Pomfret, married and the father of two, is author of "Chinese Lessons" (2006), an account of modern Chinese history as lived by classmates at Nanjing University, which he attended in 1981.
He worked at the Press-Enterprise in Riverside, Calif., and for the Associated Press before joining The Post.
He won the Osborn Elliott Prize in 2004 for his vivid depiction of the historical changes in China.
