AP hires two new editors for biz desk

TALKING BIZ NEWS EXCLUSIVE

Associated Press business editor Hal Ritter sent out the following announcement to the staff on Friday afternoon:

It’s a pleasure to announce the arrival of two team leaders on Monday:

Kortney Stringer, formerly assistant business editor of The Boston Globe, joins us as retailing team leader. Kortney spent the last four years at The Globe, and retailing was one of the beats she was responsible for. She also was in charge of the Sunday business section and led a redesign in 2008 to emphasize consumer stories. Before joining The Globe, Kortney was an advertising and marketing reporter and then assistant metro editor at the Detroit Free Press. Before that, she spent five years at The Wall Street Journal as a travel and retailing reporter. In her last job at The Journal, she was part of a two-reporter team covering Wal-Mart.

Kortney earned a degree in journalism at Wayne State University in 2000 and an MBA at Southern Methodist University in 2004.

John Simons, formerly editorial director for personal finance at Black Enterprise, joins us as technology and media team leader. The past three years, John was responsible for personal finance and investing content for Black Enterprise magazine and its website and for the company’s television properties. He appeared regularly as a co-host on Black Enterprise Business Report, a syndicated weekly television news program, and as a guest commentator on Nightly Business Report on PBS.

Before joining Black Enterprise, John was a writer at Fortune magazine for seven years. His last job was lead writer for the biotech and pharmaceutical industries. He covered a range of other topics at Fortune, including technology. Before Fortune, John was a policy and economics reporter for The Wall Street Journal in Washington and covered government regulation of technology. He reported on telecom reform, Internet taxation, online fraud and crime and consumer privacy.

John earned a degree in journalism at Northeastern University. He was a Markle Fellow in 2000, which allowed him to spend a year writing on technology policy in the digital age. His work was published in The Journal, The New Republic, Business 2.0 and The Industry Standard.

I also want to take some space here to thank Nick Jesdanun for the fine job he has done for many months as acting tech and media editor and Michael Lee for his leadership of the retailing team. Nick stepped up when we lost Brian Bergstein and has done a great job driving coverage on a beat that normally has two editors. Nick’s expertise and unflappable style have kept our coverage strong and made him a pleasure to work with. Michael, as I reported in April, requested a move to the spot news editing desk when a position opened up. He has provided a boost to that desk while continuing to spend time overseeing the retailing team. The spot desk gets Michael full time starting Monday, which will be a big help.