Bloomberg hires new retail reporter

Renee Dudley, a journalist best known for drawing the ire of a state governor with her reporting, has joined Bloomberg News as a reporter covering big box retail and food companies, replacing David Welch.

She came from the Charleston, S.C. paper, The Post and Courier, which she joined in 2010 as a health reporter. She is best known for being called a “little girl” after reporting on South Carolina governor Nikki Haley’s trip to Europe in 2011 to try to find more jobs for the state.

Before that, she was a reporter for The Boston Herald and The (Hilton Head) Island Packet. Dudley has won honors from the New England and South Carolina press associations for public service, in-depth, enterprise, health and government reporting.

In 2010, she received the Eugene S. Pulliam Award from the Society of Professional Journalists for her work exposing a South Carolina state law that closed all emergency medical service records.

Dudley’s work for the 22,000-circulation Island Packet won the $10,000 award presented annually by the Sigma Delta Chi Foundation, the educational branch of the Society of Professional Journalists. Judges chose Dudley for her dedicated work upholding First Amendment rights.

She graduated from Boston University, where she studied international relations, journalism and French.

Welch is now on the U.S. deals team at Bloomberg.