Casselman to join NY Times business news desk

New York Times business editor Ellen Pollock sent out the following staff hire announcement on Tuesday evening:

I’m pleased to announce that Ben Casselman will join Business Day as a reporter in September.

Ben comes to us from FiveThirtyEight, where he is a senior editor and chief economics writer. He’s written about income inequality, education, criminal justice and the last presidential election. He helped lead the site’s “Gun Deaths in America” project, which was the recipient of several awards, including one from the Society of News Design.

Before joining FiveThirtyEight, Ben worked at the Wall Street Journal, both in Dallas and New York. His coverage of the Deepwater Horizon disaster was a finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize in national reporting and won a Loeb award.

Ben started his career at the Salem News, in Massachusetts. Among other things, he covered a controversial project to erect a statue of Samantha Stephens, the character played by Elizabeth Montgomery in the “Bewitched” TV show.

Here’s a lead from one of his stories in 2005: “Maybe they won’t fly in on broomsticks, but by plane, train, and automobile, fans of “Bewitched” will soon be sweeping into the Witch City.”

I know he’ll be thrilled I’ve mentioned that here.

Anyway, as I was saying, at Biz Day, Ben will continue to do data and analytical stories about economics, as well as other business topics. And he’ll collaborate with other reporters on data-driven storytelling.

He’ll start with us on Sept. 11.

Ellen