In a note to newsroom staff, Catherine Laidlaw, Deputy National Desk Editor, Ammad Omar, Chief National Editor, and Russell Lewis, Deputy National Editor, made the following announcement:
The National Desk is expanding its coverage of religion and spirituality, and we’re delighted to announce two additions to the staff.
Daniel Burke joins the desk today as a senior editor, and Sarah Ventre starts July 29 as a senior producer. They’ll work closely with correspondent Jason DeRose.
They will help shape and lead a national-local topic team with member station reporters across the U.S. They also will work with Religion News Service (RNS) as an editorial partner and subject matter expert.
Daniel comes to NPR from the Georgetown University Center on Faith + Justice, where he was director of communications. Prior to that, he was CNN’s religion editor, where he expanded coverage from a blog to a multimedia section that curated reports from correspondents and affiliate stations. Under Daniel’s leadership, the CNN Belief team won multiple Religion News Association awards and was an Eppy Award finalist for a multimedia collaboration on American Muslims.
Daniel will work partly out of the D.C. headquarters. He lives in Maryland with his wife, two kids and too many pets to count. When he’s not working, his favorite places to be are National Parks and basketball courts. A Georgetown University graduate, he says he may be the last person keeping faith that the Hoyas men's basketball team can be good again.
Sarah was most recently director of operations for the Religion News Association. She’s worked as a managing producer, editor, writer, reporter and host on podcasts such as This Land, a Peabody-nominated series about how custody battles over Native children became a federal lawsuit that threatened everything from tribal sovereignty to civil rights; Damages, a nonfiction courtroom drama about climate change; and Unfinished: Short Creek, a 10-part documentary about a Utah/Arizona border community that’s home to the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Some of you might remember Sarah from her time editing station reporters at NPR Newscast and from the four years she spent at member station KJZZ in Phoenix.
Sarah lives in New York City and will continue to be based there. Sarah has gone to karaoke with David Koresh's drummer, traveled in Syria with a troupe of clowns and was once told by an artist with synesthesia that her voice is mauve.
Please give them a warm welcome!
– Ammad, Catherine and Russell
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