NY Times promotes Tam to deputy business editor

New York Times business editor Ellen Pollock sent out the following announcement on Wednesday:

It gives us great pleasure to announce that Pui-Wing Tam has become a deputy Business editor. Pui-Wing will continue to run our technology coverage out of San Francisco.

Since arriving at The Times in 2015, Pui-Wing has been the guiding force behind many of our most ambitious technology stories. One doesn’t have to look back more than a month or so to see her incredible impact on the news report. She was deeply involved in our recent Facebook coverage and Dai Wakabayashi and Katie Benner‘s story about Andy Rubin’s $90 million exit from Google after being accused of harassment.

Pui-Wing is one of the most talented recruiters we’ve ever met, and the strength of our tech team — in California, New York, London and China — is largely a testament to her. Reporters love to work with her.

Here’s what Nellie Bowles has to say, substantially edited for brevity and to keep Pui-Wing from getting a swelled head: “Pui-Wing is an incredible boss and has built what I think is the happiest, most functional bureau at the paper. She leads and inspires intense loyalty without much fanfare, really….. What’s best about Pui-Wing is how totally fierce she is….. Also she makes sure the office has a good happy hour at least once a month.”

Pui-Wing joined The Times from Bloomberg, where she was in charge of U.S. tech coverage between 2013 and 2015. Previously she worked at The Wall Street Journal, as a reporter and editor. In 2006, HP was so worried about what Pui-Wing, then a reporter, was up to that the company hired private investigators to snoop on her phone and text records and look at her trash. “Whether the sleuths ever encountered my toddler’s dirty diapers, HP said it doesn’t know,” Pui-Wing wrote in a story about her year of being surveilled.

Raised in Tokyo and Hong Kong, Pui-Wing started with The Journal in Hong Kong, before moving to New York and then San Francisco.  She graduated from Oxford (the British accent didn’t stick) and has a master’s degree in Journalism from Columbia.

Please join us in congratulating Pui-Wing.