Washington Post hires Halper to cover energy transition

Evan Halper

Washington Post business editor Lori Montgomery and deputy business editor Zachary Goldfarb sent out the following on Monday:

We’re delighted to announce that Evan Halper is joining the Business Desk to cover energy, a critical beat as the war in Ukraine roils global oil markets and galvanizes the effort to shift society away from fossil fuels.

Evan comes to us from the Washington bureau of the Los Angeles Times, where he has reported extensively at the intersection of global warming and politics, from analyses about the passage of California’s landmark climate law to a scoop [latimes.com] about then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger filling the gubernatorial Hummer with illegal biodiesel fuel. Most recently, Evan led a newsroom collaboration called “The United States of California,” a multimedia series that has focused on the curious – and sometimes corrupt – ways in which government and industry are struggling to meet the climate crisis.

While in Washington, Evan also helped lead coverage of the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections and wrote deeply reported pieces on California’s legal and political campaign to blunt the effects of the Trump administration’s environmental rollbacks. Before coming to Washington, Evan was the paper’s Sacramento bureau chief, leading one of the nation’s largest statehouse bureaus as California struggled with an unprecedented financial crisis and forged its path as a global leader on climate. Before the Times, Evan was a reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer, where he revealed that the EPA had failed in evaluating a Superfund site, erroneously declaring a toxic dump in a busy suburban neighborhood to be clean and safe.
Evan grew up in New York City and received a bachelor’s degree from Bates College and a master’s degree from the Columbia School of Journalism. He lives in Washington with his wife and two kids and spends his free time pedaling along the region’s bike paths.

Please join us in welcoming Evan to The Post. His first day is April 4.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.