NPR hires Platoni as senior business editor

Pallavi Gogoi, NPR’s chief business editor, shared the following announcement on Tuesday:

All,

I’m delighted to announce that Kara Platoni is joining NPR as a senior business editor. In this role, she will oversee the coverage of technology, cars and energy.

Kara’s background is eclectic, but we are most excited about her infectious, high octane energy (step aside, Red Bull!).

Kara comes to us from Wired, where she was the senior science editor, leading coverage of biotech, space, climate and energy technologies. She oversaw stories that ranged from the rise of space tourism, the quest for a better EV battery, the invention of purple tomatoes and glow-in-the-dark houseplants.

She was an assistant dean and lecturer at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. She is the author of We Have the Technology, a book about biohacking and the future of sensory perception.

A big fan of road trips and mix tapes, Kara got her start in radio at KSPC as the station’s music director, a deejay, and engineer for live bands. She also spent six years on the board of the Office of Letters and Light, a nonprofit that runs National Novel Writing Month every November, where she speed-wrote 10 (according to her) mostly terrible novels. Most recently, Kara edited economy, health and environment stories for the 19th News, an independent nonprofit newsroom focused on gender, politics and policy.

She began her career as an alt-weekly newspaper reporter, covering just about anything that happened in California’s East Bay area. Her work earned the Missouri Lifestyle Journalism Award, the Clarion Award (twice), the Evert Clark/Seth Payne Award for young science journalists, and honors from the American Association for the Advancement of Science and Northern California’s Society for Professional Journalists.

She is a graduate of UC Berkeley and Scripps College. She’s a fan of highly-caffeinated music and loud coffee. To understand what that means, you will have say hi and find out for yourself.

Kara’s first day with us is September 9, and she will be based in San Francisco. She will be working in Washington DC for a couple of weeks around mid-September during her onboarding.

Once you meet her, you will know why we’re so excited to have her on board.

Welcome to NPR, Kara!