WSJ names new reporters for corporate team

Wall Street Journal corporate bureau chief Andrew Dowell sent out the following staff promotions on Monday morning:

We’re pleased to announce a number of additions to the newly integrated Corporate Bureau. The additions fill recently vacated positions, reflect our merger with Newswires and follow a realignment of the WSJ’s retail coverage.

Paul Ziobro joins us to cover consumer products and retail. He’s responsible for retailers including Target and the dollar stores and will write broadly about consumer trends. Paul joined Dow Jones in 2005 writing for our private-equity newsletter, where he covered buyouts through the peak of the LBO boom, then moved over to Newswires and worked his way through the restaurant and consumer product beats. He earned his bachelor’s degree in journalism from Boston University. (@pziobro)

Shelly Banjo has relocated to New York from the Journal’s Dallas bureau. She brings along her coverage of big retailers including Wal-Mart, Costco, Home Depot and Lowe’s. Shelly is making a round trip to New York, where she was a charter member of the Greater New York section, and has covered philanthropy, wealth management and personal finance. She graduated from Northwestern University, started at the Journal as an intern in Chicago in and is pursuing her MBA at New York University’s Stern School of Business. (@sbanjo)

Sara Germano joins the bureau as a general assignment reporter from WSJ.com, where she handled the evening editing shift and managed the homepage on weekends. A driven reporter, Sara devoted her off hours to working for the Journal’s sports page, where she wrote stories including an investigative look at mismanagement at the US track and field organization that ran on Page 1. Sara graduated from Fordham University in the Bronx, where she majored in philosophy and studied dance part time at the Alvin Ailey School. (@germanotes)

Ryan Knutson comes aboard to cover telecom. He is responsible for carriers like Verizon and Sprint, as well as the broader social, technological and security issues inherent in the telecom industry. He spent the previous three years reporting and co-producing stories for PBS Frontline. His work there included an investigation into the high rate of accidental deaths among cellphone tower workers that earned him a spot as a Loeb award finalist this year. Ryan graduated from the University of Oregon and first entered the Journal’s orbit as an intern in San Francisco. (@Ryan_Knutson)

Tom Gryta also joins us to cover telecom. He is responsible for AT&T and T-Mobile and also will pursue broader stories about the industry. Tom previously held the telecom beat at Newswires, where he worked for the past year after returning from a Knight-Bagehot fellowship. He started with Dow Jones in 1999 as a news assistant in London and later joined the U.S. health group, where he covered biotechnology and pharmaceuticals. In 2009, Tom was part of a team that won a Sabew award for coverage of Pfizer’s acquisition of Wyeth. (@TGryta)

Drew FitzGerald signs on to cover electronics retailers like Best Buy and Radio Shack, as well as the long haul telecommunications companies that provide the backbone of the Internet. Drew joined the Newswires in 2011 and most recently was a reporter covering technology companies. He earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism at Boston University and prior to joining Dow Jones worked in Washington for Maine’s Bangor Daily News and in Denver at The Denver Post. (@DrewFitzGerald)

Please join us in welcoming these reporters to their new assignments.