NY Times taps Searcey to cover wealth and power

New York Times metro editor Nestor Ramos sent out the following on Friday:

We are delighted to announce that Dionne Searcey is joining the Metro desk, where she will create a new beat focused on wealth in New York City and the broader region.

She will be exploring the intersection of wealth and power, as well as the many ways, seen and unseen, that big money shapes (and sometimes distorts) the city.

Dionne joined The New York Times in 2014, wandering far and wide throughout the newsroom. She started on the Business desk as an economics reporter and then moved to International as West and Central Africa bureau chief. She won a Michael Kelly Award for her coverage of Boko Haram in Nigeria and was part of the distinguished team of reporters who won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. She then covered the 2020 election for the Politics desk, before moving to Climate, where her excellent work has continued.

“Dionne’s writing is musical, and her reporting targets are rich and fascinating,” said Hannah Fairfield, Climate editor. “Her years on the Climate desk took her to the Congo Basin to witness the dangerous and often illegal logging business there, and also back to her hometown of Wymore, Neb., where she told the story of the town’s resistance to a new electric school bus.”

Among her most remarkable projects was a series of stories about a cobalt rush in the Democratic Republic of Congo that led to the firing of the second most powerful person in the country over corruption issues.

Over the past few months, she has worked on coverage surrounding the presidential election, taking readers to the “blue dot” of Nebraska and to Baraboo, Wis.

Before joining The Times, she worked at no less than six news outlets (eight including summer internships) across the country. Starting out at The City News Bureau in Chicago, Dionne covered a range of beats, including crime, education, state legislatures, telecom, law, investigations and two stints in Iraq. Of the eight, she says that her favorite was The Daily Nebraskan at her alma mater, the University of Nebraska Lincoln.

Please join us in welcoming her to Metro.