Alison Smale

Alison Smale is a British journalist (* February 5, 1955, London, UK). In December 2008, Smale became the Executive Editor of the International Herald Tribune, after being promoted from Managing Editor, making her the first woman to be in charge of the paper.^[1][2] She is now the New York Times bureau chief in Berlin.

Career

Since August 2013, Smale has been serving as chief correspondent for The New York Times for Germany and central and eastern Europe.^[3] In December 2008, she was the first woman to take up the post of Executive Editor at the International Herald Tribune in Paris.^[4] Prior, she had been the Deputy Foreign Editor at The New York Times.^[5] She organized much of the paper's coverage of the Iraq war and the war in Afghanistan.

In her reporting days, Smale worked for United Press International in Central Europe, then was The Associated Press bureau chief for Eastern Europe between 1987 and 1998, based in Vienna. In this capacity, she covered the rise of Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia and changes in Russia.^[6] She covered the anti-Communist revolutions in Eastern Europe and, on the night of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, crossed Checkpoint Charlie along with the first East Germans to do so.

Smale graduated from the University of Bristol in 1977.^[7]

Recognition

The Independent, in an article about the IHT's redesign in April 2009, which Smale oversaw, called her "the most powerful British female editor overseas."^[8]

She received the America Award of the Italy-USA Foundation in 2009. In that same year, she was awarded an honorary degree from the University of Bristol, of which she is an alumna.

Other activities

• Hertie School of Governance, Member of the Board of Trustees

References