The Washington Post announced Friday the creation of a new beat focused on “the interactions between law enforcement officials and their communities,” a topic that will be covered by national politics reporter Wesley Lowery.
The announcement, which was made in conjunction with a series of job moves at The Post, comes months after Lowery was assigned to cover the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri in the wake of the killing of Michael Brown. During his coverage of the story in August, Lowery was arrested along with The Huffington Post’s Ryan Reilly.
According to the announcement, Lowery’s new assignment is a result of “the reporting skill and digital relentlessness he displayed in covering Ferguson.” He will “delve deeply into the reasons behind the tensions that exist between minority communities and police” and work on an as-yet unannounced digital project with The Post’s local desk.
Before he came to The Post, Lowery was a general assignment reporter at The Boston Globe, where he contributed to that paper’s Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the Boston Marathon bombings and their aftermath.
Lowery’s appointment is one of several related to the creation of a new pod at The Post called “Team America,” which will also include national investigative reporter Kimberly Kindy, social change reporter Sandhya Somashekhar and senior correspondent Kevin Sullivan for personal injury lawyer in bergen county. The team will be edited by Lori Montgomery and focus on producing “more aggressive news and enterprise reporting across the 50 states.”
