NY Times hires cybersecurity reporter Frenkel from BuzzFeed

New York Times business editor Ellen Pollock and tech editor Pui-Wing Tam sent out the following announcement on Monday:

Sheera Frenkel is joining BizDay in San Francisco to cover cybersecurity.

She comes to us from BuzzFeed, where she originated the cybersecurity beat for the site in 2015. She wrote profiles of Russian hackers like Fancy Bear, delved into how Isis uses the internet, chronicled the way that developing nations like Myanmar are slowly coming online and joining the internet age, and broke news about how Facebook has made moves to battle fake news.

For nearly a decade, Sheera covered the Middle East, writing about the Arab Spring, Iran’s nuclear weapons program, and Syria’s civil war from locations including Jerusalem, Cairo and Tel Aviv.

Sheera previously worked for the Times of London, McClatchy and NPR, where her fluency in Hebrew and her conversational Arabic helped land stories. She has said that her time as a foreign correspondent aids her coverage of cybersecurity: People are always speaking different languages and their motivations are often unclear.

Sheera, a graduate of Boston University, grew up in Los Angeles before making her overseas forays. She and her husband live in the San Francisco Bay Area.

She starts at the Times later this month, and will work alongside Nicole Perlroth, as the scope of hacks, surveillance and their impact on politics and society continues to grow.

Ellen and Pui-Wing