NerdWallet hires Pulitzer winner Read, among others

Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Read is among the recent hires at personal finance site Nerdwallet.

Read, who took a buyout from The Oregonian at the end of last year, is part of Nerdwallet’s investigative unit, which has also recently hired Brad Wolverton from the Chronicle of Higher Education.

“We’ve hired heavy hitters for our new investigative journalism team. They’ll turn over rocks in personal finance,” said Maggie Leung, vice president of content for Nerdwallet, in an email to Talking Biz News.

Read is investigating consumer-finance dealings for NerdWallet.

He became the Pacific Northwest’s first foreign correspondent in 1989 when he opened a Tokyo bureau for The Oregonian, Portland’s daily newspaper. He reported in 60 countries, covering economic opening in China, Russia and Vietnam, repression in North Korea, war in Afghanistan and tsunamis in Japan and the Indian Ocean.

Read won the 1999 Pulitzer for Explanatory Reporting for a series that dramatized Asia’s financial crisis by following french fries from a Northwest farm to a Singapore McDonald’s. He served on a team that investigated abuses by U.S. immigration officials, winning the 2001 Pulitzer for Public Service.

Wolverton investigated college sports for the Chronicle. Previously, he oversaw the Chronicle’s finance and federal policy coverage, supervising eight reporters and coordinating enterprise projects.

His examination of Christian influences in Clemson University’s football program was included in the 2014 volume of “The Best American Sports Writing.” His investigations into online credit mills popularized by academically deficient athletes forced two colleges to suspend their online operations.

NerdWallet’s investigative journalism team also includes head of investigative journalism Drex Heikes and investigative data reporter Alex Richards.

Heikes joined NerdWallet from the Los Angeles Times, where he was projects and investigations editor. Previously, he led coverage at the Las Vegas Sun that won the Pulitzer Prize for public service in 2009. Before that, he did his first of two stints at the Los Angeles Times. During the first one, he was sent to New York immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks to supervise coverage by 33 reporters and photographers. He was later sent to the Times’ Washington bureau to supervise foreign affairs coverage related to the attacks. He also was previously executive editor of the Los Angeles Times Magazine, which had a circulation of 1.4 million.

Richards joined NerdWallet from Investigative Reporters and Editors, where he was training director. At IRE and its National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting, Alex trained journalists nationally and internationally on best practices in investigative journalism and data journalism.

He was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2011 and won the Goldsmith and the Scripps Howard Farfel investigative reporting awards, among others, for the Las Vegas Sun series “Do No Harm,” with ProPublica’s Marshall Allen. He also shared IRE’s FOI medal for a series on Chicago’s truancy epidemic while reporting for the Chicago Tribune.

NerdWallet has also recently hired:

• Amanda Derengowski, formerly a copy editor at the Contra Costa Times. She is now the assistant assigning editor for small business.
• Andrew Wang, formerly a reporter at the Chicago Tribune.
• Chantal von Alvensleben, formerly a producer at CNN. She is head of engagement at Nerdwallet.
• Jennifer Mulrean, formerly a senior editor at MSN. She is senior assigning editor for growth categories.
• Jim McNett, formerly a copy editor at The Oregonian. He is a copy editor for Nerdwallet.
• Kim Lowe, formerly a senior editor at MSN. She is assigning editor for growth categories.