Bloomberg hires outgoing WSJ Boston bureau chief

Gary Putka, an editor and bureau chief at The Wall Street Journal in Boston, will join Bloomberg News as editor-at-large for enterprise reporting in New York and Boston, starting early 2010.

The Journal announced earlier this year that it was closing its Boston bureau, leaving reporters in that office to scramble for jobs.

“Gary Putka, whose news judgment has guided some of the biggest business and financial stories of the past decade, brings to Bloomberg an exceptional commitment to the highest standard of depth reporting,” said Bloomberg News editor-in-chief Matthew Winkler in a statement.

Putka joined the Journal in 1981, where he started as a senior special writer for the newspaper’s Markets section in New York and wrote the “Heard on the Street” column. He was named Boston bureau chief in 1993, and in 2002 became senior editor responsible for the Journal’s education coverage.

Putka was named the 1993 grand prize winner in the Benjamin Fine Awards for Outstanding Education Reporting, edited a 2003 series on preferences for the privileged in college admissions that won the Pulitzer Prize for beat reporting and co-directed a team that won a Pulitzer in 2007 for public service.

“I am looking forward to joining Bloomberg News and working with Matt and his talented team,” said Putka in a statement. “This is an exciting time of growth for Bloomberg, and I’m eager to help it continue to create stories that make a difference.”

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