Jim Kennedy is senior vice president, responsible for strategy and enterprise development, for The Associated Press. Jim was named SVP in 2011 and a vice president in 2004. He has been leading strategic planning for the organization since returning to AP in 2001 from The Wall Street Journal, where he was executive director of product planning for WSJ.com. In an earlier stint with AP, Jim managed business news and financial services and later led the company’s first digital unit, called Multimedia Services. In 1997, he won AP’s Oliver S. Gramling Award for Achievement for contributing to the organizational success of AP by revitalizing existing services and creating new ones, both as business editor and director of Multimedia Services. While AP business news editor, he served as a board member and later president of the Society of American Business Editors and Writers, the national association of financial journalists. He is a founding member of the Online News Association and a current board member of the Online Publishers Association. He first joined AP in 1987 from The Tampa (Fla.) Tribune, where he was business editor and a bureau chief. He began his journalism career as a reporter at the Ogdensburg (N.Y.) Journal and Advance News, where he later became managing editor. A native of Watertown, N.Y., Jim is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Amherst College.
