NY Times biz desk hires Kang as tech regulation reporter

New York Times business editor Dean Murphy sent out the following announcement Friday afternoon:

The convergence of technology, media and telecommunications is reshaping business everywhere, but perhaps nowhere are the consequences more pressing than in Washington. We’re pleased to announce that this fast-moving beat will soon be in the expert hands of Cecilia Kang, who for the past seven years has covered regulatory, legislative and tech policy issues at The Washington Post.

Cecilia, the Post’s senior technology correspondent, has written about net neutrality, online privacy, the on-demand economy, the digital divide, education technology, and much more. She wrote a series of stories about big tech companies allowing in-app purchases by children, which spurred an FTC investigation, charges last year against Apple, Google and Amazon for deceptive practices, and a tightening of rules governing those purchases.

Upshot’s Neil Irwin, who worked with Cecilia at The Post, describes her as “a stone-cold pro” who has owned her beat by “combining subject area knowledge, sourcing and hard work.”

Cecilia will be based in Washington and report to the tech cluster, while also working closely with Bill Brink from media and Elisabeth Bumiller from the Washington bureau

Cecilia has been at The Post since 2006, previously working at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the San Jose Mercury News (where our own Vindu Goel was her editor) and AP-Dow Jones in South Korea, where she covered the Asian financial crisis as both an editor and a reporter.

A child of Korean immigrants, Cecilia says her first job was to fill ketchup bottles and napkin dispensers at the family’s burger joint in Seattle. She was promoted when the family took over an ice cream shop and assigned Cecilia to the frozen banana dipping station. But her career in food ended abruptly, she says, when another employee (her sister) said she found a hair in the chopped nut tray.

“Journalism has worked out much better,” says Cecilia, who, to this day, disputes the hair allegation.

She starts next month.