Times promotes two in management ranks

Stephen Buckley, a national reporter for the St. Petersburg Times, and Tim Nickens, metro editor for the Times, have been named assistant managing editors.

The promotions were announced Tuesday by Times managing editor Neil Brown.

"Stephen and Tim are two of our brightest, most thoughtful journalists, and they have meaningful ties to the area," Brown said. "I'm so proud that they are not only part of the St. Petersburg Times but that they will play an ever larger role in serving our readers and developing our journalists."

Buckley, 35, becomes AME/World, overseeing the national and international report. He also will assume overall responsibility for the A section.

Nickens, 43, becomes AME/Metro, continuing to oversee coverage of St. Petersburg, the Tampa Bay region and the state. He has overall responsibility for the B section.

Buckley, a graduate of Duke University, grew up in St. Petersburg and worked as an intern in the newspaper's sports section when he was a teenager.

He rejoined the Times in 2001 after 12 years with the Washington Post as a metro reporter and foreign correspondent. At the Post, he covered police, courts and education before he went overseas. He was Africa bureau chief, based in Nairobi, Kenya, and Brazil bureau chief, based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Last year, he won the Paul Hansell Distinguished Journalism Award from the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors, one of the state's highest writing honors.

Nickens, an Indiana University graduate, first came to the Times in 1983. He covered city halls in Clearwater and St. Petersburg and criminal courts. He also spent three years in the newspaper's Tallahassee bureau.

He left in 1990 to cover state politics for the Miami Herald, but returned to the Times in 1995 and became an award-winning editorial writer. He then was political editor from 1998 until he became metro editor in 2001.

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