Categories: OLD Media Moves

USAToday hires tech reporter Barr

Alistair Barr, a tech reporter for Reuters in San Francisco for the past two years, has been hired to cover tech news for USA Today.

Barr has posted on his Twitter account that he will start his new job on Aug. 26. He will be working in the San Francisco bureau reporting to tech team leader and San Francisco bureau chief Jon Swartz.

“That’s an area that we are investing in,” said editor David Callaway in a phone call with Talking Biz News. “I am trying to get more resources in the bureaus.”

At Reuters, Barr covered Amazon, EBay and PayPal, Groupon and rivals, as well as venture-backed e-commerce companies like Gilt Groupe.

Before Reuters, he worked at Marketwatch for seven years, covering covered hedge funds, banking and insurance. While there, he wrote breaking news and features, conducted video interviews and produced video reports.

Barr also worked for Bloomberg News for four and a half years, covering hedge funds in Europe, stock exchange consolidation and European equity markets. He appeared several times a week on Bloomberg Television, doing live market updates. He also chaired and spoke at two Bloomberg hedge fund conferences in London and Paris.

He started his career at Kiplinger’s Personal Finance.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.