In 1994, he began as a reporter on the Metro staff of the Times, and as the paper's Brooklyn bureau chief, he covered education, crime, politics, health care, and the impact of the federal welfare reform legislation of 1996.
He helped run coverage of the 9/11 terror attacks, the crash of EgyptAir Flight 990, the Anthrax scare, the fatal failings of New York's care for the mentally ill, and the deadly consequences of delinquent medical treatment for those incarcerated in the state's jails.
In 2013, Branch won the Pulitzer feature writing award for "Snow Fall," the seminal achievement in online storytelling involving a fatal avalanche.
Sexton left the Times in 2013 to join ProPublica as a senior editor for the independent non-profit news organization based in New York.
At ProPublica, he also returned to reporting and writing, and in 2021, Sexton received Columbia University's prestigious Meyer Berger Award for distinguished human interest storytelling.