WaPo hires Paquette for biz news desk

Washington Post business editor Greg Schneider made the following announcement on Thursday:

We’re excited to announce that Danielle Paquette is joining the Financial staff as part of the new data/storytelling venture. Danielle is a rising star in narrative journalism. She graduated from Indiana University with a degree in journalism, and while there she took top honors from the Hearst National Writing Competition in 2011 and was named student journalist of the year for 2012 by the Indiana SPJ. She worked for the Tampa Bay Times for a year after college and has most recently been a staff writer for L.A. Weekly.

Danielle is a natural storyteller with a strong instinct for narrative and an eye for detail. On the cops beat in St. Petersburg, she would make an ordinary domestic shooting incident read like a scene from a crime novel. Then she would follow up weeks later and tell the story of the victim, the relationship gone bad, the road to recovery. She found the emergency responder who fell in love with the stabbing victim, the porn starlet who just wanted a farm in New Hampshire and, in a piece that helped her win the national collegiate award, the street preacher’s teenage daughter who faced down her peers.

We were impressed by Danielle’s writing and won over by her drive and enthusiasm, and we expect her to play a key role in making the data/storytelling project a must-read every day. Please join us in welcoming her when she starts May 5.