Marcia Davis is joining NPR as supervising editor of race and identity this month. Her first day will be June 22.
In a memo to the newsroom, Senior National Editor Vickie Walton-James said Davis will edit coverage for the National Desk and serve as a liaison with the Code Switch team.
“Throughout her career, Marcia has distinguished herself in covering issues of race, criminal justice, politics and civil rights,” she wrote.
“Though this move has been in the works for some time, Marcia joins the network during a pivotal period in the nation’s history,” Walton-James wrote, adding that Davis will help lead NPR’s coverage of ongoing protests and activism around racial justice and police reform. Davis previously helped lead the Washington Post’s coverage of protests in Ferguson, Mo., after Michael Brown was shot and killed by police officer Darren Wilson.
“NPR does a great job on the news, from covering calls for police accountability to efforts to get people counted for the U.S. Census,” Davis tweeted Tuesday. “We’ve got richer, deeper reporting to do. I’m ready.”
Davis most recently served as a news editor for the Marshall Project, a nonprofit newsroom that reports on the criminal justice system. She served as a copy editor for the Star Tribune in Minneapolis after college, according to her LinkedIn page, then joined the Post as a copy editor. She was also a night police reporter.
In 1997, Davis became a senior editor for BET. She rejoined the Post in 1999, where she edited coverage for the Style section, the Metro desk, the National desk and the newspaper’s magazine.
Walton-James also said Davis wrote feature stories on the National Museum of African American History and Culture, Howard University’s finances and the future of the black vote.