Rajiv Chandrasekaran used to be the Washington Post’s Baghdad bureau chief.  That’s some major street cred right there.  He has just been named as the Post’s “Continuous News Editor,” a job that gives him editorial control over what breaking news makes it to the Post’s website.  He is the newspaper’s first Asian American assistant managing editor.  Who else but the Washington Post reports:

Rajiv Chandrasekaran, a Washington Post reporter who started as a summer intern 11 years ago and subsequently covered local and financial news and served as the newspaper’s Baghdad bureau chief, has been named assistant managing editor for continuous news, the paper announced yesterday.

In his new job, Chandrasekaran, 32, of Washington, will head the department responsible for feeding breaking news to The Post’s Web site. The announcement was made by Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr. and Managing Editor Philip Bennett.

“Ever since he started as a summer intern, he has been one of the most energetic, smart and hard-driving journalists in the newsroom,” Downie said. During the selection process, Chandrasekaran “demonstrated real vision about the future relationship between the newspaper and its Internet site,” Downie said.

Chandrasekaran became the newspaper’s Middle East correspondent in 2002 and moved to Baghdad on the eve of the U.S. invasion in March 2003.

Rajiv was actually outspoken in his criticism of what he judged were missteps by the administration in rebuilding Iraq.  He was interviewed by NPR for this great article in the Post from last year.  The best part of this is that Chandrasekaran is young enough that he probably sees the symbiotic relationship that blogs and newspapers can have and will seek to foster that relationship.

Chandrasekaran, who says he reads the paper exclusively online, said he spent “the better part of the day in a daze” when he received the news.

“I’m looking forward to working with my colleagues at The Post to create all sorts of new and compelling content for the Internet,” he said. Among his priorities, he said, will be to increase interactivity with readers, use more video packaging and boost the number of blogs, or Web logs, on The Post’s site.

This is welcome news for us.  In case you didn’t notice, the Post is already starting to link to blogs which discuss a particular article, directly next to the article.  Take for example a link to us in the M.I.A. article we blogged about.  I knew that writing about her was good for something.