Boston Globe hires new health care reporter

Boston Globe business editor Mark Pothier sent out the following staff hire announcement on Monday;

I’m pleased to write that we have a new reporter in the Business department starting tomorrow..

We’re welcoming Priyanka Dayal McCluskey, who comes to us from the Boston Herald, where she has been covering health care. Priyanka will do some of that here, but she’s also going to help us expand our coverage of the crucial biotechnology industry. Rob Weisman does superhuman work covering biotech — along with other life sciences and hospitals, among other things — but it’s an area with more news, trends and personalities than even he can get to.

A portion of Priyanka’s time will be focused on something entirely different — a new beat we’re calling Home. Essentially, it’s anything to do with buying, selling and owning a home.

Before signing on at the Herald, she was a business reporter at the Worcester Telegram & Gazette. Priyanka covered everything from the potato chip industry to efforts to revitalize the city’s downtown to the prevalence of hospital-acquired infections.

She calls herself a “New Delhi, India/Central Mass native,” and got hooked on the news business at Boston University, where she double-majored in journalism and political science but spent most of her time in the grimy office of the student newspaper. She has written for the Times of London and USA Today. In 2012, the New England Society of Newspaper Editors named her New England journalism’s “Rising Star.”

When she’s not on deadline, she can be found in a hot yoga class, fumbling around in her kitchen, attempting to complete the Globe crossword, or cheering on the Red Sox. She loves to travel, especially to visit relatives in India.

Priyanka lives in Westborough with her husband Jack McCluskey, a sports journalist.