Arizona, with all its sprawl, diversity, resource challenges and eccentricities, will be one of the political and economic centers of the journalism world this election year and far beyond. To lead coverage of this rapidly evolving state, we’re pleased to announce that Reis Thebault will be our next Phoenix correspondent, covering the Southwest and collaborating closely with the broader West coverage team.
Reis joins us from The Washington Post, where he’s been a reporter for nearly eight years. He was most recently the West Coast correspondent, documenting the vast region’s contradictions, controversies and characters from his home base in Los Angeles.
During his time on the beat, Reis carved out a specialty in creative story forms, collaborating often with visual journalists on a wide range of pieces, from the battle to remake America’s streets to the groundbreaking kayak journey of 15 Indigenous teenagers. He helped lead The Post’s coverage of the Maui wildfires, from the disaster’s earliest days to its complex recovery. And when flames came for Los Angeles in early 2025, he spent months covering the catastrophe and its aftermath as it played out in his backyard.
Between calamities, Reis’s stories were varied and colorful. He wrote about California’s imperiled super bloom and an ancient lake that reappeared in the most improbable of places. He covered the plight of an out-of-work actor turned housekeeper and the struggles of homeless college students. He wrote of a record-breaking lightbulb and the resurgent popularity of VHS tapes.
Before moving to California, Reis was on The Post’s general assignment team, where he covered a barrage of breaking news and trending stories. He joined The Post as an intern, covered D.C. city hall for the metro desk, helped launch a national politics newsletter and served a short stint in the Brussels bureau in 2022.
Reis received his bachelor’s degree from Miami University, a public college in rural Ohio, and his master’s degree from University of California, Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism.
Please join us in welcoming him to the team.
—Nestor and Jonathan