Mary Rajkumar appointed AP assistant international editor for news projects and series

NEW YORK -- Mary Rajkumar, the deputy business editor at The Miami Herald, will join The Associated Press as assistant international editor, working on special projects and series. Her appointment was announced May 29 by AP International Editor John Daniszewski.

Rajkumar will be based in New York, the headquarters of the news cooperative, the world’s oldest and largest news gathering organization.

The International department oversees some 600 international print journalists and correspondents outside the United States who produce stories used in print, audio, video and online that reach an estimated 1 billion people daily.

“I’m delighted to be joining AP, and I’m particularly interested in enterprise and projects,” Rajkumar said, adding “the role of AP is more crucial than ever.”

Daniszewski said Rajkumar has shown a keen interest in international news and a flair for working closely with reporters and for editing complex subjects.

During two years at The Herald, Rajkumar led the paper’s housing coverage and edited a prize-winning series exposing secret court dockets withheld from the public.

Rajkumar earlier spent seven years at the San Jose Mercury News. As assistant business editor from 2001-05, she led a team of award-winning editors and reporters, improving coverage of immigrant communities and international business.

She spent four years at the Oakland Tribune covering higher education and reported on the end of the affirmative action program at the University of California. During this time she won awards from the national Education Writers’ Assocation for breaking news and feature writing and was nominated as Bay Area Journalist of the Year.

She also spent two years as the city editor for The Fremont Argus in California.

A native of Singapore, Rajkumar graduated from Cambridge University with a degree in English literature and holds a masters degree in journalism from Stanford University. She is fluent in Spanish, French and Malay, and is active in the Asian American Journalists Association.