Newsnight presenter and chief correspondent Laura Kuenssberg has been confirmed as the BBC’s first female political editor.
Kuenssberg, who was one of the favourites to land the role, succeeds Nick Robinson, who is joining the presenting team on Radio 4’s Today programme.
Tony Hall, the BBC’s director general, described Kuenssberg as “an exceptional journalist”.
Hall said: “Her knowledge of Westminster politics is second to none, but she also has a real flair for asking the questions the audience want answering.”
James Harding, the BBC’s director of news, said: “Her intelligence and curiosity, judgment and passion stood out in a field of extremely strong candidates.”
Formerly the BBC’s chief political correspondent, Kuenssberg was seen as the leading contender to replace Robinson. She first joined the corporation in 2000 and such was her ubiquitousness on the small screen over subsequent years that one journalist coined the phrase “Kuenssbergovision”.
She switched channels in 2011 to become business editor for ITV News, before returning at the beginning of last year to join BBC2’s Newsnight.
The BBC was said to be keen to appoint a woman to the role to give its political coverage more gender balance.
Robinson’s switch to the Today programme was announced earlier this month. It followed the announcement that the programme’s second-longest serving presenter, James Naughtie, will be standing down in the new year.
Kuenssberg began her career on the BBC’s north-east and Cumbria programmes and won a Royal Television Society award as home affairs correspondent.
She later joined The Daily Politics as a reporter in 2003 and has worked on Radio 4’s Today programme and BBC1’s Breakfast as well as Newsnight.
News of Kuenssberg’s appointment was tweeted by a senior BBC news executive shortly before her new job was confirmed by the corporation on Wednesday afternoon.
The BBC’s head of newsgathering, Jonathan Munro, announced the “breaking media news” that she was the corporation’s new political editor through his personal Twitter account.
His post was hastily deleted, but not before it had caught the attention of numerous Twitter users.
@MatthewBayley @jonathancmunro @bbclaurak pic.twitter.com/vQKlKt7F3a
— John Stevens (@johnestevens) July 22, 2015
Kuenssberg is understood not to have been contacted by BBC management before the tweet went out.
After her appointment was officially announced, Kuenssberg said: “I’m completely delighted and I recognise the responsibility on my shoulders. It’s an honour for me to follow Nick Robinson who has been such an outstanding political editor.”
According to the Daily Telegraph, BBC News’s special correspondent Lucy Manning, Kuenssberg’s Newsnight colleague Allegra Stratton and Channel 4 News’s Cathy Newman were the frontrunners in the race to replace Robinson.
The paper reported that both Joey Jones, Sky News’s deputy political editor, and Robinson’s deputy James Landale were also thought to be in contention after the announcement that Robinson would be standing down.
Previous BBC political editors include Andrew Marr, who held the post for five years before Robinson was appointed in 2005; Robin Oakley, who was in the job for eight years from 1992; and John Cole, who preceded Oakley and was appointed in 1981.
Before them were John Simpson, who had the job from 1980 until Cole’s appointment; David Holmes, who held the post from 1975 to 1980; and Peter Hardiman Scott, who was in the job for the five years previous to that.
