LAT adds a Biz writer

To: The Staff
From: Davan Maharaj, Business Editor

JESSICA GUYNN, Technology Writer

Jessica Guynn has coaxed information from top Silicon Valley lawyers, trailed the Washington D.C. snipers and exposed a tax break designed to help the poor that instead enriched big corporations. All of those experiences will come in handy on one of the most competitive beats in business: Google, Yahoo and the other big Internet companies changing the media landscape.

Guynn is joining The Times' San Francisco bureau from the San Francisco Chronicle, where she wrote news and trend stories about Silicon Valley. She's no stranger to multimedia reporting or hard work: On the day star high-tech banker Frank Quattrone beat government prosecutors, she broke the news on the Web, then wrote an 1,100-word story for the Business section and a 1,400-word story for A-1. Showing a keen eye for the whimsical, the trendy and the important, she covered stock-option scandals, the culture of free food at high-tech companies and the guy who decided to broadcast his entire life on the Web.

Before that, she worked a variety of business and general news beats at the Contra Costa Times, then owned by Knight Ridder. When she persuaded a source to leak her sealed documents from a closely watched Oracle court case, she became one of the first Contra Costa reporters to move the stock markets. For four months after the start of the Iraq War she covered the Pentagon from Knight-Ridder's Washington bureau, asking early on: "Where are Iraq's weapons of mass destruction?" Back in California, she investigated everything from tax breaks to seismic retrofits while co-writing a weekly column.

Jessica and her partner, Art Pulaski, executive secretary-treasurer of the California Labor Federation, live in Berkeley with their Wheaten terrier, Winston. She holds a degree in French literature from Reed College.

Please welcome Jessica to The Times when she starts on Aug. 20.