A Russian Editor Evades Putin’s Censorship
Galina Timchenko, founder of the dissident news site Meduza, has adapted as the information noose has tightened since the invasion of Ukraine.
By Alison Smale
Alison Smale
Alison Smale was a veteran editor and correspondent at The New York Times, focusing on international affairs, from 1998 to 2017.
A British citizen, Ms. Smale graduated from the University of Bristol in 1977 and received a master's degree in journalism from Stanford University in 1978. She was based in Bonn, West Germany, for The Associated Press from 1978 to 1983 and in Moscow from 1983 to 1986, chronicling the transitions in Soviet leadership from Andropov to Chernenko to Gorbachev. Then, as the Vienna bureau chief for The Associated Press, she reported extensively from Central Europe, covering the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the postcommunist transitions in Romania and Bulgaria and the war in the Balkans in the 1990s. She is fluent in French, Russian and German.
Ms. Smale joined The New York Times in 1998 as the weekend foreign editor, and became deputy foreign editor in 2002. She was in New York on Sept. 11, 2001, and organized much of The Times’s prize-winning coverage of the war in Afghanistan and then Iraq. In 2004, Ms. Smale became managing editor of The International Herald Tribune — now the international edition of The New York Times — and was elevated to executive editor in 2009.
In 2013, Ms. Smale was named Berlin bureau chief for The New York Times, and covered, among many stories, the refugee and migration crisis in Europe.
In 2017, the United Nations announced Ms. Smale’s appointment as under secretary general for global communications.
Latest
For a Russian Journalist, the Family Trade Is Dissidence
Four generations of Zoya Svetova’s family have stood up to repression. The invasion of Ukraine has shaken them but also given them reasons for hope.
By Alison Smale
Christine Lagarde on Her Plans for the European Central Bank
The first female president of the E.C.B. recalibrates its mission.
By Alison Smale and Jack Ewing
‘We Have Advanced to the Same Kind of Mess as Everybody Else’
Central and Eastern Europe’s transition to democracy has not been smooth. But there are grounds for hope.
By Alison Smale
Martin Roth, German Who Led Britain’s Victoria and Albert Museum, Dies at 62
Mr. Roth was a pathbreaking curator in London who stepped down in protest over the “Brexit” vote.
By Alison Smale
Chinese Tourists Arrested Over Nazi Salutes
The two tourists were arrested in Berlin after snapping photos of each other doing a Hitler salute outside the Reichstag, the police said.
By Alison Smale
Seelow JournalAt the Site of Germany’s Biggest World War II Battle, a Changing View of History
The grave in Seelow, Germany, where tens of thousands of soldiers died in 1945, is a reminder of uneasy German-Russian relations — and the proximity of history.
By Alison Smale
In Liu Xiaobo’s Last Days, Supporters Fight China for His Legacy
Admirers of the dissident, who has terminal cancer, say that Beijing wants to control him. “They don’t want him to be able to speak freely,” one said.
By Chris Buckley
Memo From HamburgViolence at G-20 Tests the Limits of Expression in Germany
Protests during the Group of 20 summit exposed Germany’s difficulty in effectively guaranteeing the right to nonviolent expression while maintaining public order.
By Alison Smale
World Leaders Move Forward on Climate Change, Without U.S.
At a G-20 summit meeting marred by violent protests, 19 other member states broke decisively with President Trump, in a victory for Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany.
By Steven Erlanger, Alison Smale, Lisa Friedman and Julie Hirschfeld Davis
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