NYT biz writer Treaster leaving for academia

New York Times business reporter Joe Treaster is leaving the paper to teach journalism at the University of Miami, according to a memo from business editor Larry Ingrassia posted on the Romenesko site.

Ingrassia wrote, “Many people at the Times know Joe for his work as a business reporter concentrating on the insurance industry, an assignment he began in the summer of 1996, after studying at the Columbia University Business School on a Knight-Bagehot Fellowship in 1995 and 1996.

“But he has done many other things at The Times. For the five years before business school, Joe’s primary assignment was writing about drug trafficking and illicit drug use in the United States, Europe and Latin America. The assignment was an outgrowth of his previous work in the cocaine fields of Colombia, Peru and Ecuador and the trafficking center of Panama as the newspaper’s Caribbean correspondent, responsible for parts of Latin America as well as the island region.

“In addition, he often helped cover breaking foreign news. He reported from Jordan, Iraq and Kuwait in the build-up to the Persian Gulf War, and returned to Kuwait in the fall of 1994 when Saddam Hussein threatened another invasion. That summer he reported from Guantanamo Bay on a surge in Cubans trying to make their way to a new life across the Florida Straits.”

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