SF Chronicle hires Quartz’s Kopf to be its data editor

The San Francisco Chronicle has hired Quartz data editor Dan Kopf to be its data editor.

In a memo from director of product and strategy Tim O’Rourke, Kopf said:

We hope our team will inform, entertain and surprise readers. Data is an incredibly potent tool for understanding local trends and holding the powerful to account. I am thrilled we will be able to add best in-class statistical analysis and data visualization to The Chronicle’s coverage of the Bay Area.

Before becoming data editor at Quartz, Kopf was a reporter covering economics and markets, drawing heavily on his data analysis skills to inform his stories.

He previously worked at Priceonomics, where he was a data journalist reporting on topics as diverse as the rise of the one-word song title, to the relationship between race and municipal revenue from fines.

Prior to journalism, Kopf worked primarily as a data scientist, most recently at consultancy Savvy Sherpa, where he helped companies use data to create new products, and before that in India where he managed a large malaria field experiment. He also worked for several years with the think tank RAND on a variety of international health studies and spent a year in Vietnam as a Princeton in Asia fellow.