Jonathan P. Hicks, who covered big business and all levels of New York politics, including the campaigns of three New York City mayors, over 24 years as a reporter for The New York Times, died on Monday at his home in Brooklyn.

After leaving The Times in 2009, Mr. Hicks was a research fellow at a public policy institute, a columnist for The New York Amsterdam News and a co-founder of a scholarship for aspiring Liberian journalists.

Mr. Hicks, whose father, John H. Hicks, was the first black reporter at The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, joined The Times in 1985, assigned to the business news staff after stints at The Plain Dealer of Cleveland and The Arizona Daily Star.

He moved to the metropolitan desk in 1992 to report on Mayor David N. Dinkins’s re-election campaign, an ultimately unsuccessful rematch against Rudolph W. Giuliani, a former United States attorney, writing front-page articles about each candidate’s attempts to woo black voters.

Mr. Hicks later covered Mayor Giuliani’s crusade against crime and his re-election campaign.