OLD Media Moves

Washington Post hires O’Donovan to cover Amazon, Microsoft

Caroline O’Donovan

Washington Post business editor Lori Montgomery, deputy business editor Damian Paletta, technology editor Christina Passariello, and deputy technology editor Laura Stevens sent out the following on Wednesday:

We’re delighted to announce that Caroline O’Donovan is joining The Post’s tech team to cover Amazon and Microsoft.

Caroline joins us from BuzzFeed News, where she has been a reporter since 2015. As an inaugural member of the San Francisco bureau and the award-winning tech desk, she covered labor issues in the technology industry. In 2019, she co-authored an investigation into Amazon’s delivery network that revealed how the pressure for productivity contributed to dangerous and even deadly accidents and how Amazon uses third-party contractors to sidestep legal liability. That reporting resulted in a follow-up story co-published by BuzzFeed and ProPublica that was featured on “Frontline” and won a 2019 SABEW award. She also obtained never-before-seen data on Uber driver earnings, dug into workplace injuries at Tesla, investigated working conditions at a Blue Apron food processing plant, and broke news on nascent labor organizing efforts at Amazon. Caroline joined BuzzFeed’s Inequality Desk in 2020, where she expanded her coverage to include the relationship between public schools, the pandemic and private tech companies, while continuing reporting on Amazon’s response to the pandemic and mounting pressure from organized labor.

Caroline also spearheaded a collaborative project at BuzzFeed on YouTube’s recommendations algorithm that helped jumpstart BuzzFeed’s Tech + News Working Group.

Before joining BuzzFeed, Caroline was a staff writer at Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab, where her coverage of new models for journalism was honored by Syracuse University’s Mirror Awards. Before that, she worked as a journalist in Chicago, where she freelanced for various publications including Chicagoist, Gaper’s Block, and the Atlantic, and held a fellowship at WBEZ Chicago Public Media where she reported on everything from pedicabs to public housing.

A native of New Jersey, Caroline graduated from the University of Chicago with a double major in political science and English. She lives with her husband near Berkeley, where her hobbies include thrift shopping, swimming, playing tennis and exploring California history. She’ll work out of our San Francisco newsroom and will spend time as appropriate in Seattle.

Please join us in welcoming Caroline to The Post. Her first day is May 31.

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.

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