AP hires Lerman to cover tech, Ortutay moving to San Francisco

Associated Press business editor Brad Foss sent out the following announcement:

Colleagues:

It gives me great pleasure to announce that Rachel Lerman, who has covered technology for The Seattle Times for the past three years, will be joining our technology team in San Francisco next month.

Rachel’s work has focused on Microsoft, startups and venture capital. She’s written about facial-recognition and the concerns over privacy; bias against women in the industry; and innovation. At AP, she’ll also cover a wide range of topics, including Google, data privacy and emerging technologies, with an eye toward how they affect us at work and in our daily lives.

Prior to The Seattle Times, she covered technology and retail for the Puget Sound Business Journal and was a government reporter for the Skagit Valley Herald. Rachel was an Arthur F. Burns Fellow in the summer of 2017, covering general business topics at Der Tagesspiegel, a daily newspaper in Berlin.

Adding further heft to our tech reporting in Silicon Valley, Barbara Ortutay will be moving to San Francisco in March to get better access to sources and the latest innovations. Barbara has been one of our national technology writers for the past decade in New York, where she has covered the rise of social media – and all the problems it has brought. She has also done strong reporting on elections interference and finds quirky tech stories that make us all smile, such as the tale of new emojis.

Rachel’s first day with AP will be Jan. 7 and she will be in San Francisco full-time beginning in early February.

Please join me in welcoming Rachel and wishing Barbara good luck with her move.

-Brad