A Reporter With a Wealth of Knowledge on the Wealthy

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As a reporter for The New York Times, Dionne Searcey has, as she put it, covered “a gazillion different things.”

She has written about politics, environmental issues and economics and traveled to places like Romania; the Congo River; and Dakar, Senegal, where she served as the West and Central Africa bureau chief from 2015 to 2019. In 2020, she was also part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize for exposing Russia’s “shadow wars” across Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

In late 2024, Ms. Searcey joined The Times’s Metro desk to create a new beat, one unlike any other she had covered: wealth and power, primarily in New York City. The Times recognized that “it was important to have someone covering wealth in New York at this incredible time of inequality in the city,” she said, adding: “Writing about wealth can also be a lens through which to view poverty and inequality.”

For a recent article, Ms. Searcey reported on egg prices at grocery stores and what they reveal about an emerging power structure in New York City. She also shadowed a viral content creator as he shopped for watches. And last year, Ms. Searcey covered the internet’s reaction to the killing of the UnitedHealthcare chief executive.

In an interview, Ms. Searcey spoke about the challenges of her coverage and why some people are fascinated with reading about the wealthy in America. This interview has been condensed and edited.

How do you find the stories you write about?

By talking to people who aren’t wealthy, but are fascinated by this kind of wealth or who have come across people with this kind of wealth. In New York City, all you have to do is look up to see the wealth that exists — there are so many luxury towers. Everybody has a story about the way that they have intersected with wealth or power in the city.