Kevin Quealy

I’m the editor of The Upshot section of The New York Times. We’re a small, versatile team that publishes analytical and explanatory journalism, often on policy and politics. And we often use visuals, data and interactivity to explain the world in new ways.

What I Cover

Unlike most Times desks — like International, National, Metro, Science — The Upshot doesn’t have a unifying subject or a geographical domain. But there are common themes in what we do.

Our best work:

• Answers a basic question from an analytical perspective
• Is creative or imaginative in its conception or execution
• Often — but not always — involves data or analysis
• Uses visuals deliberately, as evidence
• Uses technology to present stories in new forms

Our reporters cover a range of essential subjects — elections, education, cities, health care, abortion, gender, artificial intelligence, climate, the pandemic. But we also turn our curiosities toward lighter subjects, like the fuzzy boundaries of New York neighborhoods, the Santa economy and maps of sports fandom. And we created some of The Times’s best-known interactive projects, like the Election Needle, the Dialect Quiz and the N.F.L. playoff simulator; game companions like WordleBot and Spelling Bee Buddy; and recurring quizzes like Flashback.

This breadth of work — in form and composition — is what happens when more traditional reporters work side by side with technologists and visual specialists. Together, they publish something no one person can make on his or her own.

My Background

I have an undergraduate degree in physics from Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minn., and a master’s degree from the Missouri School of Journalism. I also served as a Peace Corps volunteer in South Africa and spent a couple of years as a wilderness guide in northern Minnesota and as a busboy at an Italian restaurant in Minneapolis.

My Times career is relatively straightforward — I got an internship in The Times’s Graphics department in 2008 and never left. I joined the Upshot when it started in 2014 and became its editor in 2022.

I love working with and connecting people with different skills and backgrounds. Accuracy, fairness and clarity are top priorities, of course, but I also value originality, creativity, technical ingenuity and simplicity.

Journalistic Ethics

All Times journalists are committed to upholding the standards of integrity outlined in our Ethical Journalism Handbook. Journalism about or using data comes with additional responsibility — to communicate uncertainty properly and to be as skeptical and rigorous with data as we would with any other source of information.

Whenever possible, we use data from established sources, like the Census Bureau or the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But it’s our job to describe the world however we can, which can mean reporting on academic research, working with companies to share information that wasn’t previously public, surveying Americans or compiling our own data sets.

Data is not perfect. It is simply information, like a tip, a quote from a source, an official document or anything else journalists use to do their jobs. But sometimes data can best describe what’s happening in the world, and we do our best to use it responsibly.

• Email: [email protected]

• X: @kevinQ

• Anonymous tips: nytimes.com/tips