Washington Post hires Najmabadi as breaking biz news reporter

Washington Post business editor Lori Montgomery, deputy business editor Sandhya Somashekhar, business breaking news editor Robbie DiMesio, deputy business breaking news editor Sergio Non and weekend business editor Helen Fessenden sent out the following on Monday:

We’re excited to announce that Shannon Najmabadi is joining The Post as a breaking news reporter on the Business desk, where she will cover the biggest news and seize the best opportunities for enterprise involving business, tech and the U.S. economy.

Shannon comes to The Post after a year and a half at the Wall Street Journal where she worked as a Mid-U.S. correspondent covering breaking news and writing enterprise from her home base in Kansas City. Her stories for the Journal covered a wide range of topics, including the impact of medical debt in rural communities, problems at a federal college for Native Americans and growing homelessness among elderly baby boomers.

Before joining the Journal, Shannon wrote for the Colorado Sun, where she covered issues such as supply chain disruptions during the pandemic and won a Top of the Rockies award from SPJ’s Colorado chapter for an article on abandoned wind turbines. Before that, Shannon spent almost four years with the Texas Tribune, where she dug into the idiosyncrasies of state business regulations that define “pickle” and a state law that lets the rent-to-own industry send people to jail for missing furniture payments. While at the Tribune, Shannon contributed to a package of stories that won a national Edward R. Murrow Award for coverage of the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy, which led to the separation of migrant families who crossed the border illegally. She also worked at the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Shannon holds a bachelor’s degree in legal and media studies from the University of California at Berkeley and a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University.