From businessman to business reporter

Mara Lee of the Hartford Courant profiles New York Times investigative business reporter Charles Duhigg, who went into business after college before becoming a business journalist.

Lee writes, “The first summer during his MBA program, he interned at a private equity group.

“‘I was so incredibly bored. My job was building models analyzing which hotels to buy,’ he said. So, as a reward, he would listen to one hour of ‘This American Life,’ an NPR show, each day.

“While he was still in New Mexico, he’d been able to freelance for The New Republic because a friend from Yale worked there. And when he finished his MBA, he landed an internship at The Washington Post.

“A lot of his classmates were making $200,000 or $250,000. He was living in his in-laws’ basement and working alongside people who were more than five years younger and had at least $60,000 less debt.

“‘The best choices I’ve ever made are the most humbling,’ he said.

“He followed his wife to California, where she was getting her doctorate, and landed a job at the Los Angeles Times, writing about the outdoors. He volunteered to report from the Baghdad bureau three times, for several months each.”

Read more here.