The Associated Press (AP) has promoted Karen Kaiser to head its legal function as part of a US restructuring initiative.

Kaiser, who joined AP as assistant general counsel in 2009 and was made associate general counsel in 2011, now has the title of senior vice president, general counsel and company secretary, and continues to be based in the company's headquarters in New York.

As part of the shake-up, broadcast executive David Gwidcuski, who joined the company in 1997, has also been appointed senior vice president responsible for revenues in the Americas.

During her time with AP, Kaiser has focused on First Amendment issues and government investigations of journalists, as well as more general newsgathering, document and source issues, libel, courtroom access, and the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

She is also responsible for drafting and negotiating appeals with federal and state agencies on the FOIA and state open records denials, filing more than 200 FOIA appeals since joining AP.

She also led AP's legal strategy against the US Department of Justice after the DOJ revealed last spring that it had secretly seized records from more than 20 AP phone lines as part of a leaks investigation.

Before joining AP, she was senior counsel for Tribune Company, handling the editorial, litigation and transactional legal work for daily newspapers such as The Baltimore Sun, The Hartford Courant, The Morning Call, and Newsday, and a number of broadcast stations.

She was previously a litigation associate at Cahill Gordon & Reindel in New York where she worked on the Valerie Plame CIA leak investigation.

Related: CBS Corporation turns to Dell for new general counsel.

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