Richard Pretorius

After working as an editor on the foreign desk of the Washington Post (2001-2006), Richard Pretorius went out to explore the bigger world he had felt privileged to edit stories about. The first stop was Abu Dhabi and the launching of the National newspaper (2008-2013), then Hong Kong and the South China Morning Post (2013-2015) during a remarkable time of pro-democracy protests and 40,000 or so restaurants to choose from. In 2015, he became a remote worker, editing stories for the London/Tunis based Arab Weekly (2015-2020). He was in Spain when COVID-19 clobbered Madrid in March/April 2020, and the newspaper shut down. He felt emotionally saved during those dark days of around-the-clock wailing ambulances and social distancing by the infectious spirit of the Spanish people and we-are-all-in-this-together nightly balcony shows. He edited a book on the history of human rights groups in Iran, did a blog for an Aussie website focusing on the Biden-Trump 2020 presidential race, and said “yes” to just about any other freelance work. In July 2021, he returned to the United States, working as an editor for Zenger News Service and then the Las Vegas Review-Journal. He joined Wealth of Geeks as a writer/editor in October 2023. Prior to catching the “international bug,” he had been the editorial page editor of three newspapers and a news editor/columnist in the Washington bureau of Scripps Howard.