Christine Spolar has been a journalist for over three decades, reporting on wars and economic upheaval and directing and editing investigations from London to Washington to Beijing to Tokyo. Based in London, she writes about big issues including the coronavirus epidemic. See her most recent work for The Washington Post and National Geographic here.
Christine was the international business editor of the New York Times, in London, from September 2018 through November 2019. She handled news and enterprise stories from Asia to Europe such as the coverage of Carlos Ghosn, the global auto chief accused of financial wrongdoing in Japan, and the cost of Brexit.
From 2017 to 2018, she was executive editor of Kaiser Health News, a nonprofit news organization based in Washington and San Francisco. She managed a 40-plus staff and was deeply involved with data reporting, digital design and editing. Among her projects were 'Prescription for Power,' a ground-breaking database on the flow of money from pharmaceutical companies to patient advocacy groups, and the crowd-sourced investigation, 'Bill of the Month.'
From 2011 to mid-2017, Christine was the investigations/special projects editor at the Financial Times. She directed investigations into tax avoidance, the Libor rate-rigging scandal, austerity efforts in the United Kingdom and United States, cyber security flaws among US agencies, and Chinese investment in Europe. She also wrote longform stories on Iraq and refugee resettlement and produced digital content, including a podcast on Iraqis seeking US visas.
In 2016, 'The Great Land Rush', an FT series on global land investment, won the European Newspaper Award for multimedia storytelling and top honors at the British Press Awards for environmental reporting. The series won best online investigation from the US-based Society of Professional Journalists as well as honors from the Overseas Press Club and SABEW in 2017. A series on Chinese investment, 'Silk Road Redux', was among the stories that won Business Team of the Year at the British Press Awards in 2015. ‘The Middleman’, the story of how one Hong Kong dealmaker with seven aliases spearheaded China's investment in Africa – won investigation of the year in 2015 from the Society of Publishers in Asia. An investigation that Christine co-authored in 2013, ‘Death in Singapore’ , was highly commended by the British Magazine Editors. A series on tax avoidance, ‘Tax Wars’ , won an Overseas Press Club award and honors from the Society for Business Editors and Writers in the US. An interactive series on UK budget cuts, ‘The Austerity Audit’, won best investigation from Editor & Publisher in the US. Coverage of the Libor scandal won honors for innovation from Editor & Publisher.
Christine is nimble in web, print and television news. She was a correspondent for the Washington Post and the Chicago Tribune, based in Washington, Los Angeles, Warsaw, Jerusalem, Cairo, Baghdad, London and Rome. Christine covered the Bosnian wars in the 1990s for the Post. She was the Chicago Tribune’s bureau chief in Jerusalem, beginning in 2002, and in Baghdad, during the first year of the Iraq war. She reported from Iran in 2007 and 2008.
In 2016, she worked in Tokyo as an editor for Nikkei, the parent company of the FT. She has also worked in start-ups – as senior editor at the Huffington Post Investigative Fund in 2009 – as well the business site, Bloomberg News.
In television, Christine was an award-winning producer at CBS’s 60 Minutes II. One broadcast on the loss of a Navy pilot in the Iraq War of 1991 won an Emmy and honors from Investigative Reporters and Editors in 2001. The Lost Boys of Sudan and how they settled in the US also won an Emmy.
Christine is a graduate of Northwestern University's Medill School. She was a Fulbright lecturer in Slovenia at the University of Ljubljana. She was a Kiplinger Fellow at Ohio State University, where she earned a masters degree in journalism. In 2015, she completed masters-level digital journalism/computing/mapping classes at Goldsmiths University in London.