AP deputy biz editor leaves for Wall Street Journal

TALKING BIZ NEWS EXCLUSIVE

Hal Ritter, the business editor of the Associated Press, sent out the following announcement on Wednesday to the business desk staff:

I’m sorry to report that Deputy Business Editor Chuck Hawkins has decided to leave the AP to take a job at The Wall Street Journal as an editor on the national staff in New York.

All of you know the role Chuck has played in Business News as overseer of our daily report since joining AP in July 2004. His editing skills and unsurpassed knowledge of business and finance have helped shape and greatly improve countless stories each day. Chuck is a virtuoso whose range is both broad and deep.

His job at The Journal will be to help plan and produce the best mix of political stories possible for Journal readers.

I know you all join me in wishing him the very best.

Hawkins joined the AP in 2004. An Iowa native, he began his career at The Gazette of Cedar Rapids in the mid-1970s and was a business reporter at The Des Moines Register and Tribune and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

From 1986 to 1993, he held positions in Atlanta, Toronto and New York for BusinessWeek magazine. He was a managing editor and Washington bureau chief for Bloomberg News for some eight years until 2001.