David Meeks, who has worked both investigatve reporting and sports -- and who oversaw the Associated Press Hurricane Katrina coverage -- has been named a new assistant managing editor.

The formal announcement out today is below:

David Meeks, a veteran investigative and sports editor who led award-winning newspaper coverage of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, has been named an assistant managing editor for The Associated Press.

The appointment was announced Monday by Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll.

Meeks will help oversee the AP News Center, a new global headquarters operation in New York that works closely with AP's regional and department leaders to deliver competitive coverage across all media formats. The center also works with other parts of the AP Nerve Center on new storytelling ways to engage readers and viewers.

“David brings keen news skills, strong competitive instincts and a gift for connecting with readers and viewers,” Carroll said. “He has a proven record of leading strong coverage across subjects.”

Meeks most recently served as assistant sports editor for the AP's East region, based in Philadelphia. He also helped run the AP's social networking engagement efforts around the Winter Olympics in Vancouver in February.

Meeks was working as sports editor at The Times-Picayune of New Orleans in August 2005 when the newspaper was forced to evacuate in the aftermath of Katrina.

The reporting team he led stayed behind in the devastated city for six weeks, and its coverage won Pulitzer Prizes for breaking news and public service. When the newspaper's operations returned to the city from Baton Rouge, Meeks was named city editor.

In 2008, Meeks was the senior editor on a Times-Picayune narrative series that used short, serialized chapters with cliffhanger endings to tell the story of two New Orleans homicide detectives as they worked the city's 37th murder of the year. The series, which included videos that delved deeper into the lives of the main subjects, was a 2009 Pulitzer finalist in local reporting.

As Times-Picayune sports editor, Meeks edited an investigative project on how some NFL teams helped move Super Bowl tickets to scalpers' markets.

He also edited a three-part narrative series on how football had changed private schools known as the South's “segregation academies.” The project was the newspaper's first finalist in the American Society of Newspaper Editors contest.

Meeks, 46, a native of Huntsville, Ala., grew up in Troy, Mich., and graduated from the University of Michigan.

He had a brief career as a radio disc jockey before starting his reporting career at small newspapers and The Birmingham News in Alabama. He also worked as a features columnist at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, and in New Orleans previously served as a bureau chief and suburban editor.

Meeks will report to Deputy Managing Editor Sally Buzbee, who oversees the News Center.