Maheshwari to take on media beat at NY Times

New York Times business editor Ellen Pollock sent out the following on Friday:

We’re thrilled to announce a new role for Sapna Maheshwari. Sapna will join our media group covering TikTok, emerging media and whatever other surprises come along. And we expect there to be lots of them.

In a way this is a homecoming for Sapna, who covered advertising when she joined The Times in 2016. She distinguished herself by writing about inappropriate videos being served to children by YouTube, and by getting a story about “programmatic advertising” onto the front page without using those words. She wrote about misinformation going viral before we knew it was a thing and a fake home for influencers.

In 2019, Sapna moved to retail, where she dug into the scandal and upheaval at Victoria’s Secret, the internal clashes and implosion at Outdoor Voices, and documented the downfall of Forever 21.

Sapna previously was a reporter at BuzzFeed News and Bloomberg News.

“Sapna is an editor’s dream. She’s competitive, ambitious, fearless and amazingly versatile,” says Connor Ennis, her longtime editor. “She’s as comfortable digging into the corrupt corporate culture at Victoria’s Secret or recounting in vivid detail the family-run Forever 21’s descent into bankruptcy, as she is letting readers know that we have entered a new ‘denim cycle’ ruled by loose-fitting, high-waisted jeans or getting the word ‘coatigan’ into the pages of The New York Times for the first time.”

Please join us in congratulating Sapna on her new role.