NYTimes hires tech reporter Dougherty from WSJ

New York Times business editor Dean Murphy sent out the following staff announcement on Tuesday:

He graduated from college with a degree in chemistry and every expectation he would pursue a career in biotechnology. He is an avid skateboarder, who has broken his elbow each of the past two summers. His first job out of college was teaching high school math.

Then he discovered journalism.

Now Conor Dougherty, a reporter at The Wall Street Journal for the past 10 years, is joining our technology team in San Francisco as a beat reporter.

Amy Chozick, who worked with Conor at The Journal, describes him as a “rock star” and the paper’s best reporter “in terms of range, creativity and gutsiness.” Peter Lattman, another former colleague, says this: “I love him. Such a cool guy, and a clever reporter.”

Conor is a regular contributor to the paper’s so-called A-hed feature on Page 1, and for the past nine months has been based in San Francisco covering real estate, housing and urban development. Earlier, Conor spent five years working for The Journal’s economics group in New York.

He has also worked for The San Diego Union-Tribune, where one focus was the local skateboarding industry, and for The Los Angeles Business Journal, where he dabbled in Hollywood and other business coverage. He started his working life (after graduating from the University of California, San Diego) in 1999 as a teacher at St. Mary’s College High School in Berkeley, Calif., where, he explains, “I taught algebra and geometry whilst fielding teenage questions such as how old I was and if I had a girlfriend.”

Conor has a deep curiosity and understanding of technology both as an industry and a consumer phenomenon, and is full of ideas about covering Silicon Valley. He will start in July.