James Brooke | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | James Bettner Brooke February 21, 1955 |
| Occupation | journalist |
| Notable credit(s) | Bloomberg News, The New York Times , the Miami Herald , The Berkshire Eagle |
James Bettner Brooke [1] (born February 21, 1955, in New York City [2] ) is an American journalist who currently serves as editor in chief of the Ukraine Business News, an English-language subscription news site based in Kyiv, Ukraine. Previously, he was editor in chief of the English-language Khmer Times newspaper, in Cambodia. From 2010 to 2014, he was the Russia/former Soviet Union Bureau Chief for Voice of America, based in Moscow. For VOA, he wrote Russia Watch, a weekly blog. Previously, he worked as Moscow Bureau Chief for Bloomberg. Before Bloomberg, he reported for 24 years for The New York Times , largely overseas in countries such as Japan, South Korea, Ivory Coast and Brazil.
Posts held by Brooke at The New York Times have included:
- assistant to James Reston, Washington columnist, 1978–80
- metropolitan reporter, 1984–86
- bureau chief, Abidjan, Ivory Coast, December 1986-January 1989
- bureau chief, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, February 1989-July 1995
- Rocky Mountain bureau chief, Denver, Colorado, August 1995 – 1999
- bureau chief, Canada, August 1999- 2001
- East Asia correspondent (Japan, South Korea, North Korea) based in Tokyo, August 2001-June 2006
Brooke graduated from Yale University with a BA in Latin American studies and was a stringer for United Press International as a student. In 1976, he spent a semester at Pontificia Universidade Catolica in Rio de Janeiro. Brooke remains an active alum with Yale. He serves as President of the Yale Club of Berkshire County, [3] and in 2025 ‒ as negotiations began to end the Russo-Ukrainian War ‒ he served as speaker for a Yale alumni event hosted by the Yale Club of Hartford on "What's Next for Ukraine?". [4]
After graduation, Brooke was a freelance reporter and part-time staffer at The Berkshire Eagle in Massachusetts from June 1977 to April 1978. Prior to joining the Times as a reporter in 1984, he was the South American correspondent for the Miami Herald .
