Ken Belson is a sports reporter for The New York Times. He writes about the business of sports, including franchise sales, tickets, stadiums and many other topics.
Mr. Belson joined the Sports section in 2009 after spending three years in the Metro section writing about transportation, economics and energy. Previously, he had covered media and telecommunications for the Business section.
Mr. Belson joined The New York Times in 2001 in the Tokyo bureau to write about business in Japan.
In 2011, Mr. Belson was part of a team that was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for International Reporting for their coverage of the tsunami and nuclear disaster in Japan.
Prior to The Times, he wrote for Bloomberg, Reuters and Business Week, all in Tokyo, as well as for many publications as a freelancer.
Mr. Belson travels widely, including annual trips to Asia. He is the co-author of “Hello Kitty: The Remarkable Story of Sanrio and the Billion Dollar Feline Phenomenon” (2003), a book about Japan’s answer to Mickey Mouse.
He attended Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism from 1995 to 1996 on a Japan-America Friendship Commission Fellowship.
He won the Pulitzer Traveling Scholarship, which he used to travel to the Cook Islands to write about what happens when a country goes bankrupt.
Mr. Belson lives with his wife in New York. They enjoy listening to jazz, taking long walks and rooting for the Mets, not necessarily in that order.