Robert McCartney was the Post's Assistant Managing Editor for Metropolitan News. He oversaw the newspaper’s largest staff, covering local news in Washington, DC, as well as the city’s suburbs in Maryland and Northern Virginia. In that job he supervised coverage of the 2007 Virginia Tech shootings for which the Washington Post staff received the Pulitzer Prize for breaking news reporting. At the Post since 1982, McCartney has worked as an editor or reporter in five different departments, including the foreign and national security desks.