Dow Jones Newswires hires two for Caracas bureau

Charlie Roth, the assistant managing editor of Latin America for Dow Jones Newswires, made the following announcement on Tuesday:

I’m pleased to announce that Kejal Vyas and Ezequiel Minaya have joined Dow Jones Newswires’ Caracas bureau, and that Dan Molinski is leaving the bureau in their capable hands to transfer to Bogota.

Kejal will be covering Venezuela’s key energy sector, including the government’s premier financing vehicle, state-owned oil firm Petroleos de Venezuela, or PdVSA. Kejal has a good idea of what he’s getting himself into, having covered PdVSA bond and Venezuela sovereign debt issues from his previous position in the New York Emerging Market’s group. Before joining Dow Jones in early 2008, Kejal worked at the Newark Star-Ledger, where he spent more than two years covering general news in Newark, then cops and courts in Morris County. Kejal graduated from Rutgers University with a degree in history and journalism.

Zeke will cover Venezuela’s turbulent politics and economy. A New York City native, Zeke’s experience covering politics, courts and crime in Los Angeles should give him a novel perspective on President Hugo Chavez’s ongoing nationalizations of private companies accused of malfeasance. He worked at the Los Angeles Times; McClatchy newspapers in Fresno and Modesto; and The Press-Enterprise near Los Angeles. He also reported for the Houston Chronicle. He spent 13 months as an embedded war correspondent in Iraq writing for Stars and Stripes. Zeke received his bachelors degree from Guilford College, N.C., and a masters in journalism with an emphasis in Latin American studies from the University of California at Berkeley.

After a successful run in Caracas, Dan will be joining Darcy Crowe in Bogota to cover Colombia’s commodities-rich economy, intriguing politics and challenging security issues in dealing with Latin America’s largest and oldest Marxist guerilla insurgency. He’ll be going back to familiar ground. Dan first joined Dow Jones in Bogota in 2000 and in 2004 jumped to the AP for two more years there. In 2006, he came back to the DJ fold, first on the foreign exchange desk, then expanding his responsibilities to include coverage of Fed speakers and hedge funds. Dan started his reporting career in 1994 in Mexico toiling for The News, that country’s largest English-language daily. Dan has a Bachelors degree from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, in International Relations.