AP names Raghu Vadarevu the new West assistant editor for enterprise

Raghu Vadarevu, an editor on The Associated Press' West Desk, has been promoted to West assistant editor for enterprise.

The appointment was announced Friday by West Region Editor Traci Carl, who oversees news for 13 states. In his new role, Vadarevu will oversee investigative and long-term enterprise across the West.

"Raghu has been helping the AP improve and innovate in the West since the desk began five years ago," Carl said. "He brings to his new role a passion for investigative journalism and creative storytelling."

Vadarevu, an 8-year AP veteran, joined the West Desk at its inception in June 2009, and has served as both a Top Stories editor and interim enterprise editor.

Most recently, he has led coverage of the legal recreational pot industry in Colorado and Washington state. He also oversaw an investigation into staffing irregularities at a privately run state prison in Idaho that led the governor to take back control of the facility and won the Society of Professional Journalist's public service award.

As Top Stories editor, he was the main editor on stories that included the 2011 shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and many others in a grocery store parking lot in Tucson, Arizona, and the LAPD manhunt for a rogue ex-officer who went on a killing spree before dying in a fiery standoff with police.

Before moving to Phoenix to join the West Desk, Vadarevu was an editor for the AP's National and International desks in New York. He has also worked as a reporter for The St. Petersburg Times, The Record (Bergen County, New Jersey) and The Providence Journal.

Vadarevu is a 1997 graduate of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and received a master's in journalism from Columbia University in 2002. He lives in Phoenix with his wife and daughter.