NEW YORK – (May 7, 2013) – Al Jazeera America, the new American news channel that will launch later this year, today announced that veteran business news journalist John Meehan has been hired as senior executive producer of the channel’s financial and business coverage. Meehan was also named senior executive producer of the new business magazine program that will be hosted by former CNN chief business correspondent Ali Velshi.
Ehab Al Shihabi, executive director of international operations for Al Jazeera and the senior executive leading the development of the new channel, said that Meehan will help fulfill Al Jazeera America’s goal of reporting business stories that go beyond the headlines. “Al Jazeera America wants reporters that are able to explain to its viewers the full meaning of the earnings and economic statistics so they can understand what the story means to them personally. John Meehan’s career has been devoted to doing exactly that and we know he’ll be able to help us instill that same drive and ethic in all our business and financial coverage.”
Meehan, a journalist for nearly 30 years, has covered business affairs on a global scale. Most recently, Meehan was the global executive producer at Thomson Reuters where he supervised production at “Reuters Insider” and developed a series of digital, multimedia “white papers,” examining such topics as the growth of high frequency trading. His report on widespread interest in frontier markets won him and his team a 2011 SABEW Award for best in business multimedia production.
“This is a really exciting opportunity to reinvent the notion of what business news coverage in America can be,” said Meehan. “Al Jazeera America’s business and financial coverage will be about the continuing economic challenges facing the American family today, rather than just the daily ups and downs of Wall Street and official statistics.”
Prior to his work at Thomson Reuters, Meehan was the managing editor at Bloomberg Television, the senior news editor at CNBC, the Paris correspondent for The Associated Press – Dow Jones and an associate editor at Businessweek. For the last year, Meehan has been a freelance strategist and editor helping media companies and other corporations identify unique stories and crafting a strategy to develop and package content for key audiences.
See more press releases from Al Jazeera America here.
