John Branch joined The New York Times in September 2005 as a reporter in Sports. Mr. Branch was a sports columnist at The Fresno Bee from 2002 to 2005, and worked at The Colorado Springs Gazette as a business reporter from 1996 to 1998 and a sports reporter from 1998 to 2002.

Mr. Branch’s 2011 series "Punched Out," about Derek Boogaard, a professional hockey player valued for his brawling, shed light on the sport’s embrace of potentially brain-damaging violence. The series won several awards, including a Dart Award for Excellence in Coverage of Trauma, and was a finalist for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize in Feature Writing.

Born in Redondo Beach, Calif., Mr. Branch earned a Bachelor of Science in business from the University of Colorado Boulder in 1989 and a Master of Arts in journalism from the University of Colorado Boulder in 1996.