Vlasic joins NYT as Detroit bureau chief

Bill Vlasic, who has covered the auto industry for the Detroit News and BusinessWeek, among others, has joined the New York Times as its Detroit bureau chief, according to a memo from Times business editor Larry Ingrassia posted on the Jalopnik blog.

Ingrassia wrote, “With more than a dozen years’ experience covering the industry, most recently for the Detroit News, Bill knows the business inside-out. Detroit is a company story, a consumer story, a labor story, an environmental story and a political story, and Bill has demonstrated an ability to approach the beat from all these angles.

“He won a Loeb Award in 2005 for a series on safety problems with car roofs, and was a Loeb finalist in three other years. And he wrote a gripping series on Heinz Prechter’s battle with manic depression, and how it drove the prominent auto executive to take his own life.

“His book, ‘Taken for a Ride,’ about Daimler Benz’s buyout of Chrysler, which he wrote with Brad Stertz, was lauded by our own Keith Bradsher in the Times’ Book Review. He likened it to ‘Barbarians at the Gate…a spellbinding tale, juicy gossip and all, of how business is really done among the world’s largest companies.'”

Read more here.