NYTimes names new London economics correspondent

Outgoing business editor Larry Ingrassia and incoming business editor Dean Murphy of The New York Times sent out the following staff announcement on Wednesday:

After two plum assignments – in Detroit and Albany – Danny Hakim is taking a turn at a hardship posting, as Business Day’s European economic correspondent based in London, replacing Landon Thomas next summer.

Yes, we realize that Danny will have a difficult time knowing what to do for culture and entertainment in London, but he has proven to be a resourceful and enterprising reporter, so we’re confident he will figure it out.

For Danny, returning to Bizday will be a homecoming. He started his career at The Times in 2000 covering investing. He then served as Bizday’s Detroit bureau chief from 2001 to 2005, writing about everything from the challenges facing the Big Three to their contentious relationship with the U.A.W. to “Hummer Camp” (an offroading weekend GM for rich Hummer drivers) to a profile of Snoop Dogg’s personal car detailer (whose name was Big Slice.)

He moved to The Times’s statehouse bureau in Albany as a reporter in November 2005, and became bureau chief in 2007. Danny notes that he has covered four governors, “which I’m pretty sure is a record for us.”

Of course, one of the main reasons he covered so many governors is that he uncovered the transgressions of two of them. Danny was a key part of the team that won a 2009 Pulitzer for breaking the story that led to the resignation of Gov. Eliot Spitzer, and also was part of a team that broke stories that led Gov. David Paterson to drop out of the 2010 gubernatorial race.

Never one to rest on laurels, Danny was a finalist for the Pulitzer Public Service award this year for the 2011 series, “Abused & Used,” that he co-authored with Russ Buettner, which probed abuse, neglect and corruption in the care of the developmentally disabled. That series won the Batten Medal this year from the American Society of Newspaper editors.

How good has Danny been as Albany bureau chief? After pondering what to say to salute him, Carolyn Ryan wrote, “Ah, screw it. By the time I get through saying how great he has been for Metro we will be in to 2013.”

Danny began his journalism career as a clerk at the Washington Post, and then became a police reporter at the Greenville News in South Carolina and an investing reporter at SmartMoney.com before joining The Times. He grew up in Virginia Beach, Va., and graduated from St. John’s College in Annapolis, Md. He also has contributed chapters to new editions of “A History of Us,” a 10-volume American history textbook series written by his mother, Joy Hakim. Most recently, he wrote a chapter explaining the financial crisis to fifth graders. “Not easy!” he notes. (For the next edition, maybe he will add a chapter about the European debt crisis.)