Star Tribune editor Nancy Barnes announced by email Wednesday afternoon that she has hired former employee Kevin Diaz to run the paper's bureau in Washington, D.C.

Diaz, a longtime Star Tribune employee, left the paper in March when it was sold to Avista Capital partners. He said at that time that he would stay in Washington D.C. to cover Alaska for the McClatchy Co., the former owner of the Star Tribune.

Diaz was not immediately available for comment.

Barnes' announcement follows:

I'm delighted to announce that Kevin Diaz, a veteran Washington correspondent, will be our chief correspondent in Washington beginning June 18. We asked Kevin to take on this role after a national search that delivered more than 100 applicants for our open position. We interviewed a number of candidates before deciding that Kevin was the best person, by far, for this role.

As many of you know, Kevin started his career at the Star Tribune as a police reporter in 1984 and went on to win awards for his coverage of gang crime and city hall. He later moved to Washington as a senior writer for the Washington City Paper, before joining McClatchy as a correspondent in Washington in 2000.

Kevin stayed with McClatchy when the Avista deal closed in March, covering Washington for the Anchorage Daily News and the Idaho statesman.

His enterprise work includes multi-part pieces reported from Cuba, Brazil and Mexico, which have won several awards, including the Associated Press Managing Editors Award for international reporting and recently the sweepstakes award in the state AP contest. As our chief correspondent, Kevin will be responsible for covering our delegation, as well as major state and regional issues before Congress, such as the farm bill. We expect him to be instrumental in covering the upcoming Senate race, and the Republican convention headed our way.

Kevin will be joined in Washington by an intern: Jake Sherman, a senior from George Washington University and editor-in-chief of the campus newspaper. He has interned at the Washington Post, the Journal News in White Plains, NY, the office of Rep. Christopher Shay, CNN's Crossfire, and the Stamford Advocate. He will intern with us from June 18-Aug. 31.

They will report to Doug Tice. For those of you interested in the details: We have rented space in the Scripps Howard newsroom, effective June 18, since we lost our own bureau space in the McClatchy sale.

Please join us in congratulating Kevin and Jake on their roles