Insider adds five to its DC bureau

Insider Washington bureau chief Darren Samuelsohn sent out the following on Tuesday:

Good morning,

We have some exciting news to share from the DC bureau. We’re about to nearly double in size.

This time a year ago we didn’t exist. Now, with the arrival of these five reporters in the coming weeks we’ll be a team of 13 journalists covering politics, policy and power in the nation’s capital.

Our new hires:

Nicole Gaudiano joins us to cover the Joe Biden White House. She comes to Insider from POLITICO, where she’s been a national education reporter on the K-12 policy beat. Nicole previously worked at USA Today and Gannett, where her many duties included being the Washington correspondent for Joe Biden’s hometown paper, The (Wilmington) News Journal. She started following Biden before he ran for president in 2007 and was often one of the few reporters on the ground with him in Iowa and South Carolina during the 2008 presidential primary race that ended with Biden being Obama’s VP pick. She reported on Biden as vice president and also covered Sen. Bernie Sanders for the Burlington Free Press and USA Today, including during his 2016 campaign. She starts Feb. 16.

Warren Rojas is Insider’s newest politics reporter. He’s done it all so far in an impressive career that includes dissecting policy at Tax Notes, politicians at Roll Call and procedures at Bloomberg Law. He’s a longtime investigative reporter, as well as former restaurant critic and congressional gossip columnist: So, he’s pretty much perfect to dig into the strange brew that is America in 2021. He starts March 1.

Adam Wren will be the DC bureau’s politics features reporter. He’s a narrative journalist with more than a decade of experience writing for POLITICO Magazine, The Washington Post, The New York Times and Indianapolis Monthly. Adam will be based in Indianapolis and work as Insider’s roving national political correspondent profiling political figures, taking America’s political temperature and digging into policy with deep dives. Building on nearly 3 years of coverage of Pete Buttigieg for other outlets, Wren will also continue covering the most visible and prominent Transportation Secretary in history. He starts Feb. 22.

Ryan Barber will cover the Justice Department and courts on the federal law enforcement beat. It’s familiar turf for Ryan, who’s been doing exactly this over the last five-plus years at The National Law Journal. Ryan previously covered Massachusetts politics for the Cape Cod Times, where he was named Newsroom Rising Star by the New England Society of Newspaper Editors and made a point of not leaving until he could competently shuck an oyster. He starts March 1.

Camila DeChalus will also be on the federal law enforcement beat digging into the Justice Department, federal courts, homeland security, and more. She comes to Insider from CQ Roll Call, where she’s spent the last three-plus years writing about immigration policy, the Department of Homeland Security and President Trump’s border wall. Camila grew up in West Haven, Connecticut, and is now based in Washington D.C. She starts Feb. 16.

They’ll join our current DC bureau team that includes Robin Bravender and Tina Sfondeles covering the Biden White House and Democratic administration; Dave Levinthal covering politics, money, ethics, and legal affairs; Tom LoBianco on the GOP politics beat; Kimberly Leonard covering health care, economic stimulus policy and congressional leadership; and Kayla Epstein, who’s been digging into gender, politics, and policy in the Biden era.

Welcome to the team!