NY Times biz reporter Abrams joining documentary unit

Jason Stallman of the New York Times sent out the following announcement on Tuesday:

I have more good news about “The New York Times Presents,” our documentary series that has been renewed for a third season and recently received two Primetime Emmy nominations and four news and doc Emmy nominations: We’re bringing considerable reporting firepower to the operation with the addition of Rachel Abrams as a senior producer.

Rachel comes to us from Business, where her byline has been atop so many groundbreaking stories over her seven years at The Times. She was part of the team that investigated fatal ignition switches in General Motors vehicles, which led to tighter government oversight of the auto industry and earned The Times the Scripps Howard award for public service reporting. She was part of the team of reporters that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for exposing powerful and wealthy sexual predators. She was part of the team that won a Loeb Award for an explosive article about how Les Moonves tried to bury sexual misconduct allegations.

The reporting on CBS and Moonves provided a case study of how a company’s culture could enable misconduct over decades, and rewrote the history of one of America’s major television networks. Rachel and her reporting partner, Jim Stewart, are turning their coverage into a book for Penguin Press.

“Rachel is an indefatigable reporter,” Jim said. “When one source said ‘no’ to her request for an interview, she said, ‘That’s not an acceptable answer.’ She gave up her Memorial Day weekend to fly to Arizona to interview a key source for our book. When he dangled the possibility of more information, she extended her stay by checking into one of those timeshare resorts where you get two free nights if you sit through a 90-minute sales pitch. She did. Afterward she said she wasn’t interested. Another salesman pressed her: would she be at some point in the future? ‘Absolutely not.’”

Rachel grew up in Los Angeles before moving to the Philadelphia suburbs for middle school and high school — with a brief detour to the Netherlands to learn a little Dutch. “I wish my grandmother could see me now,” she said, “because maybe she’d finally stop telling me to go to law school.”

Rachel will not be going to law school. At least not yet. First we need her to apply her reporting prowess to our ambitious documentary efforts. We’re thrilled to have her on our team.