LAT hires in Sacramento

Here's the new addition to the Los Angeles Times I alluded to in the previous post: an investigative reporter in Sacramento. Tonight's memo in the newsroom from David Lauter, the assistant managing editor for California and local news:

I’m delighted to announce that Jack Dolan, a prize-winning reporter for the Miami Herald, will be joining us shortly after the first of the year as a new reporter in our Sacramento bureau.

Last year, Jack was a key reporter on a series of stories in the Herald that showed how Florida’s lax regulation of mortgage brokers had allowed thousands of felons, including people convicted of fraud and theft, to peddle mortgages to unsuspecting borrowers. The series won the Gerald Loeb award, as well as several other prizes that recognized its meticulous reporting and excellent writing. It all started when Jack had the hunch that matching a state database of mortgage brokers with a database of convicted felons might yield interesting results. Good hunch. That was not the first time that Jack’s skill with data has helped lead him to great stories: In 2001, writing for the Hartford Courant, he was a Pulitzer finalist for a set of stories that mined the state’s death certificates to show how hospitals were covering up fatal medical errors.