WSJ hires LA Times biz reporter to cover real estate

The Wall Street Journal has hired Los Angeles Times business reporter Chris Kirkham to cover residential real estate and homebuilders.

Kirkham had been at the Times since May 2014 covering the economy.

Before that, Kirkham had been a business reporter at the Huffington Post in New York since December 2010, where he has covered a range of topics including the business of higher education, private prisons and the environment. Previously he worked as an environmental and politics reporter at The Times-Picayune in New Orleans and has had internships at The Washington Post and the Miami Herald.

He was part of a Times-Picayune team that covered the 2010 BP oil spill. For its coverage, the newspaper won the Edward J. Meeman Award for environmental reporting from the Scripps-Howard Foundation and received second place for Columbia University’s John B. Oakes Award for environmental journalism. Chris was a finalist for young business journalist of the year from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers.

A native of Texas, Kirkham earned master’s and bachelor’s degrees from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.