Sewell Chan

Sewell Chan is an American journalist who currently serves as The New York Times international news editor, for which he has worked since 2004. In February 2011, he was named deputy opinion page editor of the Times. He was previously a Washington correspondent covering economic policy. From 2007 to 2009, he was the founding bureau chief of City Room, the newspaper's local news blog.
Chan is a member of the National Advisory Board of the Poynter Institute and has been honored with a Rosalynn Carter Fellowship for Mental Health Journalism.

Chan, the son of immigrants from China and Hong Kong, grew up in Flushing, Queens and attended New York City public schools and Hunter College High School. His father was a taxi cab driver. He graduated from Harvard College with a A.B. in Social Studies in 1998 and won a Marshall Scholarship for graduate study at Oxford University. He received his MPhil in Politics in 2000. He interned for The Philadelphia Inquirer in 1995, The Wall Street Journal in 1996, and The Washington Post in 1997 and 1999.

From 2000 to 2004, Chan wrote for The Washington Post, where he covered municipal politics, poverty and social services, and education. He was the author of a four-part investigative series about the treatment of juvenile delinquents in the District of Columbia, and won praise from the Society for American Archivists for his investigation into conditions at the District of Columbia Archives. He also covered the conflict in Iraq for the Post's Baghdad bureau.

After moving to The New York Times in 2004, Chan developed a reputation as a prolific reporter. He reported on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the 2005 transit strike, and the 2008 papal visit of Benedict XVI.