Bloomberg names new Chicago bureau chief, hiring again from Tribune

TALKING BIZ NEWS EXCLUSIVE

Flynn McRoberts, the deputy projects editor at the Chicago Tribune, is leaving the paper to become Chicago bureau chief of Bloomberg News.

It’s the second high-profile hire by Bloomberg from the Tribune newsroom in the past three months. Earlier, the wire service hired Tribune business editor Jim Kirk to take over running its White House and congressional coverage.

McRoberts is a 1989 graduate of Northwestern University. At the Tribune he led teams of reporters for the newspaper’s series on the fall of Arthur Andersen, the bankruptcy of United Airlines, and the Bush administration’s targeting of Muslim men for deportation after the Sept. 11 attacks.

The Andersen series was a finalist for the 2003 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting. The deportation series, “Tossed Out of America,� won the 2004 George Polk Award for National Reporting. A Tribune reporter since 1998, he has covered three presidential campaigns, and as an urban affairs reporter chronicled the Chicago Housing Authority’s efforts to transform some of the nation’s most notorious housing projects.

Previously, McRoberts, an Idaho native, was a Chicago correspondent for Newsweek and an intern for the Miami Herald.

He is replacing Steve Walsh, who has been bureau chief since October 2005. Walsh is also Bloomberg’s enterprise editor.

Before that, Walsh was transportation editor at Bloomberg, and a news editor in the New York office.