NYT taps Knight-Bagehot fellow to report on autos

Aaron Kessler, who has been on a Knight-Bagehot fellowship at Columbia University, will begin writing for The New York Times next month from Washington, D.C., on the auto industry and its regulation.

Kessler has also been a staff writer for 100Reporters, a nonprofit journalism organization based in Washington, and he worked at the Detroit Free-Press in its Washington bureau focused on autos.

He previously worked at the Sarasota Herald-Tribune covering the housing market. Kessler was honored by the Society of American Business Editors and Writers and UCLA’s Gerald Loeb business awards for his extensive investigation of tainted Chinese drywall, tracking its shipment into the United States and its spread across the country. (This stuff contains gases that cause it to corrode metals and cause equipment like air-conditioners in brand-new homes to fail.)

He has a master’s from the University of Missouri and bachelor’s from Washington University in St. Louis. He’s been a trainer and speaker at national IRE conferences, and was deputy director of the Virginia Public Access Project, managing a campaign finance database and developing stories for a consortium of news outlets.