NYT biz reporter Hansell joining AOL startup

New York Times business journalist Saul Hansell is leaving the paper to join Seed, the content management platform startup from AOL.

The announcement, which Hansell posted Tuesday on his personal blog, states that Hansell will be reporting to Mike Rich, senior vice president of AOL entertainment, and will be responsible for leveraging Seed across all of AOL’s platforms.

Hansell joined The Times in 1992 and most recently was covering the telecommunications beat, including wired and wireless communication of voice, data and video, including companies involved in telephone, Internet backbone, cable TV, Internet video, cellphone handsets, and other devices connected to networks, as well as communications policy and privacy.

He was the founding editor of Bits, a blog on nytimes.com covering a wide range of technology topics with particular interest in Internet media, digital marketing, consumer electronics and the evolving business models for music and video.

Bits was named best blog among larger publications in the 2007 Best in Business awards by the Society of American Business Editors and Writers. His September 1989 story on computerized trading, “The Wild, Wired World of Electronic Exchanges,” won the Overseas Press Club’s Morton Frank award for best magazine business reporting from abroad. He has also received awards from the Deadline Club of New York and the American Society of Business Press Editors.

Hansell received his Bachelor of Arts in Urban Studies/Economics from Columbia College in 1984.

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