Keith Bradsher

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Keith Bradsher is an American business and economics reporter and the Beijing bureau chief for The New York Times. He previously led the Shanghai bureau and was the chief Hong Kong correspondent since 2002, reporting on Greater China, Southeast Asia and South Asia on topics from economic trends to energy and the environment. He has won many awards, including sharing the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for a series about the business practices of Apple and other tech companies. He studied economics at UNC Chapel Hill, where he earned a B.A. with high honors as a Morehead Scholar, and he holds a public policy master’s degree in economics from Princeton. He attended Hong Kong International School for four years.

Bradsher joined the Times in 1989. He was the Detroit bureau chief for nearly six years, a Washington, D.C. correspondent covering international trade and then the Federal Reserve for five years, and an New York City reporter covering airlines and telecommunications for two years before moving to Asia.

He is known for reporting since 1997 on SUV crash dynamics, showing that high-riding SUVs can cause more damage to smaller cars and their occupants because of their height and design, not just their weight. This work helped lead automakers to add safety features, and Ford called one solution “Bradsher Bars.” He later wrote the book High and Mighty: SUVs – The World’s Most Dangerous Vehicles and How They Got That Way.

In 2011, an insurance study found that redesigned bumpers and other changes reduced deaths in crashes involving SUVs and pickups. Bradsher also wrote in 2009–2010 that China was overtaking the West in wind turbines and solar panels, and he covered Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines in late 2013.

Other honors include the George Polk Award for national reporting on SUVs in 1997 (and a Pulitzer finalist that same year), the New York Public Library Helen Bernstein Award for High and Mighty, and awards from SOPA, the Asia Society’s Osborn Elliott Award, and the Overseas Press Club for coverage of clean energy in China. The Asia Society noted his work showing how China, despite being a major polluter, was developing advanced solutions to global warming.