Vox hires economics, health care reporters

Jim Tankersley, the policy and politics editor at Vox, sent out the following staff announcement on Tuesday:

All:

I’m delighted to announce two additions to the policy and politics team, in our ongoing quest to dominate coverage of how policy is being made in Washington, and how it affects Americans’ lives.

Alexia Fernandez-Campbell joins us to cover economics and distressed communities, after a terrific tenure at National Journal and the Atlantic. She brings us a wide range of talents: She can drill deep on tax policy or tell a smart, human story on the economics of immigration in the South Carolina peach industry. (I highly recommend you read her tale of machete-wielding life in the massive homeless camp in the shadow of Silicon Valley.) As her former boss, Ron Brownstein, describes her: “She’s a terrific writer and thinker, but even more, she is astonishingly good at getting ordinary people to open up about their lives in ways that produce compelling stories and make policy tangible and real.”

Here at Vox, she’ll tell those stories, both out in the country and here on Capitol Hill, where she’ll help spearhead our coverage of tax reform. Alexia started her career in Florida, first at La Palma and then at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. She is a dual citizen of Mexico and the United States, a graduate of the University of Tennessee and American University, and a Tae Kwon Do black belt. We’re ecstatic to have her.

We’re equally ecstatic to add one of the sharpest health care writers in the country, Dylan Scott, from Stat News. Anyone following the fast rise and fall of the American Health Care Act in Congress this past month has needed to read Dylan; his work has been essential to understanding the politics that ultimately killed the bill, and the impact it would have had on the American health care system.

He’ll keep covering health care — whatever comes of it now — on the hill for us at Vox, but we’re broadening his portfolio: He’ll also dive into other major areas of legislation as they spring to the forefront, particularly tax reform. We know he’ll thrive, because he’s excelled covering diverse topics in the past, in and outside Washington, including Supreme Court cases, the opioid crisis, and Steven Soderbergh’s on-screen obsession with drugs. Dylan is an Ohio University graduate who launched his career at the Las Vegas Sun and has also worked at Governing, National Journal and Talking Points Memo — where his editor was our own Kay Steiger. She says he is “an ace reporter on health care, a terrific writer with good ideas, and — most of all — an exception colleague. He’s also happy to obsess over Game of Thrones with the rest of us nerds.” In other words, another great fit.

Please welcome Alexia and Dylan, who both start next week.