Azmat Kahn Joining NY Times as Investigative Reporter

Azmat Khan, who is currently a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, is joining the NY Times staff as an investigative reporter for the magazine and newsroom. Khan won the Pulitzer Prize in 2022 for International Reporting for her investigative series on Civilian Casualty Files that appeared in the newspaper and magazine.

Jake Silverstein, Editor-in-Chief of The NY Times Magazine, said in a post: “Azmat truly embodies the best spirit of what we do at The New York Times. She has demonstrated again and again the difference that tenacious journalism — rigorous, principled and committed to holding power to account — can make in the world. Her investigations over the past decade at The Times, Buzzfeed and the PBS series “Frontline” have won her much acclaim and resulted in significant policy outcomes. Her 2017 story for the magazine, The Uncounted, which she co-wrote with Anand Gopal, helped spur an internal investigation of civilian casualties in Iraq. Her follow-up to that project, The Civilian Casualty Files, definitively showed the pattern of flawed intelligence, human error and disregard for human life led to systemic problems throughout the air campaigns in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. That work was based on more than five years of reporting, including extensive ground investigations at the sites of more than 100 civilian casualty incidents, more than 1,300 formerly secret military records she obtained in a legal battle with the Pentagon, and scores of interviews with military and local sources.”

In addition to the Pulitzer, Azmat has twice won the National Magazine Award. She has also been recognized with a Polk Award for Military Reporting; the Overseas Press Club’s Ed Cunningham Award for Magazine Reporting and the Roy Rowan Award for Investigative Reporting; the Hillman Prize for Magazine Journalism; the John Seigenthaler Courage in Journalism Award; and many other honors.

Azmat is also an Assistant Professor in Journalism at Columbia (some of her former students played important roles in the airstrikes project). This year, she launched the Li Center for Global Journalism at Columbia, for which she serves as the director.

In her new staff position, Azmat will continue to work on big international investigations for the magazine, as well as contribute in various ways to the news report.

Azmat, who’s based in New York, is a native of Michigan, and a graduate of the University of Michigan. She also holds a postgraduate degree from Oxford University, which she attended as a Clarendon Scholar, and studied at the American University in Cairo, Egypt, as well.