Maloney becomes WSJ’s new beverage and tobacco reporter

Jennifer Maloney

Jennifer Maloney, who has been covering books and publishing for The Wall Street Journal, is taking over the beverage, alcohol and tobacco beat.

She replaces Mike Esterl, who accepted the paper’s recent buyout offer. His last day at the paper is Dec. 15.

Maloney previously covered cultural institutions for the Journal and before that was an investigative reporter at Newsday.

She was a finalist for a Deadline Club Award for “Kent Haruf’s Last Chapter,” a story about how the author completed a final novel as he was dying. She received a prize from the Society of the Silurians for her reporting on the collapse of New York City Opera. She was the lead reporter on an investigation of hazardous platform gaps on the Long Island Rail Road – a series which prompted $20 million in fixes and new federal regulations. The project was a finalist for the 2008 Pulitzer Medal for Public Service.

She also received an Edward R. Murrow Award for a radio piece she reported about a Haitian journalist returning to the airwaves in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake.

Previously at The Journal. Esterl wrote about the U.S. airline industry and was a foreign correspondent in Germany. He also has covered Latin American and emerging markets as a reporter and editor with Dow Jones Newswires in New York and Mexico City.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.