Three reporters are joining Metro at The New York Times

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The Metro desk is adding three reporters.

Ana Ley

There were a lot of things to like about Ana Ley from the get go. She’d worked in Texas, Las Vegas and Virginia, where she was both a star reporter and an editor at The Pilot. She’d done a terrific series about predatory tunnel tolls that led to a shakeup in the company that ran the system and then another on racism in the Portsmouth, Virginia, municipal government that made her a finalist for a Livingston Award.

And then, unsolicited, she sent us a memo on covering the New York City transit system that was chock-full of great ideas for investigative digs and features, and real insights into how to cover this sprawling beat. We were sold. Ana will be joining Metro as our new transit reporter on Oct. 25.

Ana was born in Reynosa, Mexico, grew up in the Rio Grande Valley and graduated from the University of Texas-Pan American. A member of Investigative Reporters and Editors, she has served eight years as a mentor for the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.

Lola Fadulu

One of the first calls I got after becoming Metro editor this spring was from Elisabeth Bumiller, who told me: “There’s this person I think you should get to know.” And so began a series of conversations with Lola Fadulu, a fledgling reporter at The Washington Post who had also been in the first New York Times fellowship class, based in Washington.

As a Times fellow, she got front-page bylines for stories about the Trump administration’s cuts to the food-stamp program and its rollback of nutrition guidelines. At the Post, first as a fellow and then as a Metro reporter, she was ahead of the curve in covering efforts to persuade Black district residents to get vaccinated. Lola will be joining Metro as a general assignment reporter on Nov. 8.

Raised in Vero Beach, Florida, Lola earned her undergraduate degree from Amherst and a master’s in journalism from American University.

Karen Zraick

If you’ve worked at The Times in the past decade, chances are good that you’ve met Karen Zraick, a multitalented member of many desks. She’s been an editor for the home page, contributed to coverage of the Syrian civil war for the International desk, been a reporter for Express and a stalwart writer and editor for Live during its extraordinary coverage of the pandemic. She even worked as a freelancer on Metro’s “City Room” blog back in the day.

Here’s just a few of the words Patrick LaForge used in describing her: “Self-starter. Good at explainers and complicated stories. Fast. Trustworthy. A mentor to new reporters.” Strung together, they sounded like the perfect description of a Metro general assignment reporter. So we signed her up. Karen started on Oct. 18 and already has a long list of stories in the works.

Born and raised in Brooklyn, Karen received her undergraduate degree in Spanish from SUNY Purchase and a master’s in journalism from Columbia. Before coming to The Times, she worked at the AP in New York and for the New York Daily News. A board member of the Arab and Middle Eastern Journalists Association, she is working on a book about the Arabic-language newspaper her great-grandfather published in the Little Syria neighborhood of Lower Manhattan in the early 1900s.

A final word, about Michael Gold. Michael has been an invaluable member of the Metro desk since coming on board in 2018, both as an elegant, quick-turn general assignment reporter and more recently as a member of our elections team. For the coming months, Michael will be covering transit and transportation stories, alongside Ana Ley and Winnie Hu, before returning to politics as the governor’s race heats up next year.

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