Wayne leaving NYT biz desk for teaching

New York Times business reporter Leslie Wayne confirmed that she is leaving the paper via buyout and will become the first Reynolds Visiting Professor in Business Journalism at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

She will teach graduate and undergraduate courses during spring semester 2010 in the Cronkite School’s business journalism specialization, which is funded by the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation.

Wayne reports on business, finance and politics for The Times. She has covered Wall Street, military contractors and aerospace, municipal finance and, during presidential election years, campaign finance. Since joining The Times in 1981, Wayne has worked mainly for the business desk in New York but was also posted in the Washington bureau.

An honors graduate of the University of Michigan, Wayne has an M.B.A. in finance from Columbia University. She was a Walter Bagehot Fellow in Economics and Business Journalism at Columbia and was honored by the Bagehot program for her campaign finance coverage in the 1996 election.

Before coming to The Times, Wayne was a regional and business reporter at The Philadelphia Inquirer and before that, a political and state house reporter at The News and Observer in Raleigh, N.C.

Wayne has appeared on numerous television and radio shows, as well as The Times videos, podcasts and the political blogs. A native of Detroit, she now lives in New York.