A native of Rome, Alessandra Galloni, 47, will replace Stephen J Adler, who is retiring this month after leading the Reuters newsroom for the past decade. Under Adler’s leadership, Reuters has received hundreds of journalism awards, including seven Pulitzer Prizes, the industry’s highest honour.

A speaker of four languages, and with broad experience covering business and political news at Reuters and previously at the Wall Street Journal, Galloni (above) takes the helm as the news agency faces an array of challenges.

Some of these are common to all news media. Others are specific to the organisation’s complexity: With a worldwide staff of some 2,450 journalists, Reuters serves a range of divergent customers and is also a unit in a much larger information-services business...