NY Times hires WSJ’s Hong

New York Times metro editor Cliff Levy sent out the following announcement on Friday:

I’m thrilled to announce that Nicole Hong, an ace criminal justice and investigative reporter, is joining Metro.

Nicole has been a reporter at The Wall Street Journal for seven years, where she was a member of the team that won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for exposing President Trump’s role in hush payments arranged by Michael Cohen.

Nicole has covered federal law enforcement and legal issues for the past four years at The Journal, regularly delivering scoops on high-profile criminal investigations in New York. She has recently written about sexual harassment at big law firms, the trial of El Chapo and the affirmative action lawsuit against Harvard University. She started her career covering financial markets.

She wrote a pair of articles about a young American who defected from the Islamic State and later helped Brooklyn prosecutors dissuade other sympathizers, which won the 2017 Newswomen’s Club of New York award for newspaper feature writing.

Nicole was born in Maryland and grew up primarily in Georgia, Pennsylvania and Indiana. She received her bachelor’s degree from Northwestern University.

Beyond her record of deep, impactful investigative reporting, Nicole has also had an eye for quirky stories that capture a lot of attention. She convinced her editors at The Journal to publish front-page pieces about sloths and Nickelback fans.

And then there was her searing Page 1 exposé in 2016 about cargo shorts. As she recalls, “The article sparked a national debate and resulted in a newsroom rally by my male colleagues paying tribute to their cargo shorts.”

Please welcome Nicole to Metro!