Dallas Morning News hires Skores to cover breaking business news

Dallas Morning News business editor Paul O’Donnell sent out the following on Thursday:

All,

We’re pleased to announce that Alexandra Skores will be rejoining the business news team in January as our new breaking news reporter.

Zandra excelled as one of our interns this past summer, writing 31 stories that brought in over 212,000 page views and nearly 160,000 visitors. She wrote about gambling mecca Choctaw’s $600 million expansion, the pandemic winners and losers among our top 150 public companies and finished off the summer with a front page contribution to our State of the City project.

After her internship ended, Zandra went off to the Oregonian in Portland, where she worked as part of that newsroom’s COVID team. But she also did some crime reporting, earning this praise from Pulitzer Prize-winning narrative writer Tom Hallman Jr. for a fascinating story about a cold case in Oregon:

https://twitter.com/thallmanjr/status/1456787726737428487

(The link in his tweet is now dead, but try this one to read her story).

Zandra interned with us after graduating from the University of Iowa, where she was managing editor of the award-winning Daily Iowan. (And, yes, she’s excited about the Hawkeyes playing for the Big 10 championship this weekend). She’s a Chicago native, an NAHJ member and a sports fan — just check out her Twitter feed.

And most importantly, she was determined to get back to The Dallas Morning News. So I asked Zandra to give me five things she likes about Dallas that she wasn’t able to find in either Portland or Chicago.

Here’s her list (and I didn’t prompt her on No.1):

1. The best biz team!! + an amazing newsroom full of such talented folks.
2. Trivia Wednesdays
3. Velvet Taco & Whataburger
4. The lack of cold weather (Chicago girl at heart, though)
5. The Dallas Cowboys (sorry to the Chicago Bears)

Bonus: Marin Wolf, my bestie.

Zandra rejoins our team on Jan. 10. Until then, feel free to congratulate her on Twitter or email.

We’re excited to bring her back to Dallas.

Paul