Washington Post hires Stevens as deputy tech editor

Washington Post business editor David Cho, deputy business editor Zachary Goldfarb and technology editor Christina Passariello sent out the following announcement on Wednesday:

We are thrilled to announce Laura Stevens will join The Washington Post as deputy technology editor.

Laura will edit a team of reporters writing about America’s biggest technology companies, their relationships with consumers and the culture of Silicon Valley.

Laura spent the last nine years at The Wall Street Journal, most recently covering Amazon’s ever-expanding reach into our lives. She broke the news that the company was splitting its second headquarters between New York and Crystal City and was first to report its final decision. She also documented the surge of scammers in China who manipulated reviews on Amazon’s site and an initiative by Amazon to distribute millions of free bananas in downtown Seattle, which upset local businesses.

She was part of the team that won the SABEW Best in Business award for breaking news coverage of the CVS-Aetna deal and was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist for the same category.

Laura previously was based in Atlanta covering UPS and FedEx and wrote a range of stories from that region, including on Harper Lee’s mysterious new book and the deadly Orlando Pulse nightclub shooting. Before that, she was based in Germany, covering Deutsche Bank, among other topics.

She started her career at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette where she wrote about natural gas fracking and was a member of the special projects team. She spent a Fulbright year in Germany and is fluent in German. She has an undergraduate degree in journalism from the University of Central Florida.

A Navy brat, she moved eight times by age 14 but considers Central Florida home. She is a classically trained violinist.

Laura will start April 29 and be in the newsroom for two weeks before heading back to San Francisco, so please stop by and welcome her then.