AP biz desk hires two new staffers

Associated Press business editor Hal Ritter announced Monday the following two business journalists had joined the staff:

Ellen Gibson joins us today as a retailing reporter. Ellen comes from Bloomberg News where she covered health. Before that, she worked at Business Week magazine, which Bloomberg bought in 2009. Before Business Week, she was an editor at The Princeton Review, where she researched, wrote and edited books for students in kindergarten through college. She also taught English as a second language at the Ruri Yi Academy in Baltimore.

Ellen has a bachelor’s in English literature from the University of Maryland and is on track to receive a master’s in developmental psychology from Columbia in December. Ellen’s addition to the retailing team will help us continue to elevate coverage of one of the biggest stories: the American consumer.

Francesca Levy joins us tomorrow as a Money & Markets reporter. Francesca has covered real estate and personal finance for Forbes magazine and Forbes.com since August 2008. Before that, she worked for The Deal and covered mergers and acquisitions. While in college, she had internships at Business Week and the New York Press and worked for Newsweek On Air.

Francesca received a bachelor’s degree from the Eugene Lang College, New School for Social Research and a master’s from the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. Her arrival finally gets the M&M team back to full strength as we push beyond M&M’s core print strength to online and tablet audiences.