Laura Rozen joins Yahoo! News

Journalist Laura Rozen, most recently the chief foreign policy writer for Politico, is joining Yahoo! News. As Senior Foreign Affairs Reporter, Rozen will focus on reporting and analyzing foreign policy news out of Yahoo! News' Washington bureau.

She'll also launch a new foreign policy blog, The Envoy. Rozen's blog is the latest in the The Upshot blog network, which already includes original news blogs covering politics (The Ticket), national affairs (The Lookout), and media (The Cutline)—which you're reading right now!

Dave Morgan, Yahoo!'s executive editor of North American audiences, said "the addition of Laura to The Upshot team is another example of how the Yahoo! News blogs have established themselves not only as a home to one of the industry's largest audiences, but also a magnet for the industry's best talent."

Indeed, Rozen built a devoted readership among Washington's foreign policy players and within the diplomatic community while at ForeignPolicy.com and Politico (where I also previously worked). Now, Rozen said she's looking forward to bringing her reporting to a broader audience, "especially as Egypt's revolution and the unrest and democratic ferment under way in countries across the Middle East" has seized the public's interest.

As a plugged-in observer of the Obama administration, Rozen described how "it's also pretty extraordinary to report on them grappling with the immensity of the diplomatic challenge, with the ground shifting almost literally beneath their feet." Rozen noted that the administration already had a lot on its plate--the economic crisis, rising unemployment, two wars, Iran's nuclear ambitions, and the Middle East peace process. "On top of that now," she said, "Obama has had four dozen national security briefings in the past some 20 days."

With the launch of a foreign policy blog, Yahoo! News continues to build an operation of journalists who can narrate the big stories on their beat for Yahoo!'s audience of hundreds of millions, while also breaking news that will resonate across the Internet.

The Upshot blog network launched in 2010 with veterans from The Washington Post, Newsweek, Politico, Gawker Media and Talking Points Memo. In January, the network drew more than 37 million unique visitors, its biggest traffic month yet.