As FishbowlDC reported yesterday, Rachel Martin is joining ABC News as a general assignment correspondent to be based out of Washington, D.C.
Martin joins the network from NPR, where she was a newscaster for Bryant Park Project.
“Rachel joins ABC News with an extensive and versatile career covering some of the biggest stories of the last few years from abroad and at home,” said ABC News president David Westin in the release. “Her wide range of experience overseas will be a tremendous asset to the news division. We enthusiastically look forward to adding her to our reporting team in the Washington bureau.”
Click continued for the full release…
ABC News President David Westin announced today that Rachel Martin will join ABC News as a general assignment correspondent to be based in the network’s Washington, D.C. bureau.
“Rachel joins ABC News with an extensive and versatile career covering some of the biggest stories of the last few years from abroad and at home,” said Mr. Westin. “Her wide range of experience overseas will be a tremendous asset to the news division. We enthusiastically look forward to adding her to our reporting team in the Washington bureau.”
Martin will join ABC News in July from NPR, where she has been the newscaster for the Bryant Park Project, a public radio morning news show, since its launch in October 2007. She has been serving as full time co-host with Alison Stewart since January of this year. Prior to joining the Bryant Park Project, Martin was a foreign correspondent based in Berlin, Germany starting in 2005, during which she covered the London terrorist attacks, the federal elections in Germany, the 2006 World Cup, and issues surrounding immigration and shifting cultural identities in Europe. Martin returned to the U.S. in August, 2006 to be NPR’s religion correspondent for the network’s national desk. The following year she was awarded the “Best Radio Feature” by the Religion Newswriters Association for a story about Islam in America. As one of NPR’s reporters assigned to cover the Virginia Tech massacre last year, she was on the school’s campus within hours of the shooting and on the ground in Blacksburg covering the investigation and emotional aftermath in the following days.
Martin’s career with NPR began as a freelance reporter in Afghanistan, where she covered the reconstruction effort in the wake of the U.S. invasion in 2003 and later the country’s first Democratic presidential election. She has reported widely on women’s issues in Afghanistan, the emerging transitional justice system and NATO — led efforts to quell the ongoing Taliban insurgency. She has also reported from Iraq, where she covered U.S. military operations in Baghdad and their affect on Iraqi citizens, the alliance between Sunni sheikhs and the US military in Anbar province, and the war crimes trial of Chemical Ali.
Martin’s journalism career began as a producer and reporter at KQED, a public radio station in San Francisco. An Idaho native, she was awarded a Master’s degree in International Affairs from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs in 2003 and is a graduate of the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington, with a degree in Politics and Government.