José Manuel Romero is named news director at Cadena SER

With this appointment, SER is set to strengthen news programming in a crucial year for the future of Spain and Europe 

Romero, 51, is taking on the challenge of boosting the radio network’s lead in news across all platforms. Romero holds a degree in Journalism from the Complutense University of Madrid, and has worked with a range of different radio stations since 1983 (RNE, Rueda Rato, Onda Madrid). He was a founder of the newspaper El Sol (1990), where he worked as editor of the local news section and in 1992 he became anchor of a current affairs program on Telemadrid and news editor at the TV broadcaster, before going on to join the staff of El País (1993), where he started out as reporter for the Madrid section of Grupo Prisa’s flagship paper (1993). He was editor of the section between 1998 and 2000. He spent seven years as editor in chief of the paper’s Spain section and six as deputy managing editor in charge of news. These 13 years were ones of intense activity which saw El País uncover some of the biggest political scandals in the recent history of Spain, from the Gürtel case to the Barcenas case; from countering the conspiracy theories surrounding the 2004 Madrid train bombings to the most notorious cases of political espionage. As coordinator of media coverage on the Gürtel case, he received the Ortega y Gasset Journalism Award along with the editors of the Spain section and the Madrid and Valencia newsrooms. More recently at El País he hasworked in investigative journalism and on court reports.

The former head of News, Rafa de Miguel, who has worked tirelessly on consolidating news services at Cadena SER for the past two years, has been appointed political correspondent for the network and will be now be in charge of reporting on government news.