Biz Buzz for November 2007: Post-Dispatch loses 70 years of experience

By Chris Roush croush@email.unc.edu

POST-DISPATCH BIZ DESK NOW YOUNGER

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch business desk is three employees lighter – and minus 70 years of experience at the paper – after a buyout offer from the paper was accepted by 60 workers.

Those leaving the business desk are copy editor John Linstead, reporter Repps Hudson and columnist Joe Whittington. Also accepting the buyout offer was a news aide.

Linstead is best known for being beaten by Chicago police during the 1968 Democratic National Convention while a reporter for the Chicago Daily News. He spent 29 years at the Post-Dispatch and now plans to hike the Appalachian Trail.

Hudson (left) covered agriculture, construction and workplace issues for the paper. He has been a newspaper journalist most of the last 35 years, including 20 years with the Post-Dispatch as an editorial writer, political editor, business reporter and columnist.

And Whittington will continue to write a weekly column on business people and business deals on a freelance basis, said business editor Andre Jackson.

Whittington came to the Post-Dispatch in 1976 from the Houston Post where for 10 years he was a sportswriter and a news editor. He started at the Post-Dispatch on the news copy desk and progressed to assistant city editor, night city editor, city editor and news editor. For the last six years he has also worked on the business copy desk.

WSJ SHUFFLES WASHINGTON EDITORS

Wall Street Journal Washington bureau chief Jerry Seib has been named an AME and executive Washington editor, according to a memo from ME Marcus Brauchli.

John Bussey succeeds him as Washington bureau chief. The new positions begin Nov. 1.

In the memo, Brauchli said, “These are two of our most accomplished journalists, who between them have worked at the Journal for more than half a century. As much as anyone here, they have defined our standards of reporting, writing and reasoning. And they are paragons of our multimedia world: both of them have written columns in print and online; they have blogged; and they do television.”

Seib (above) joined the Dallas bureau in 1978 and worked in Washington covering the Pentagon and State Department before he went to Cairo in 1984. He returned in 1987 and covered the White House, diplomacy and foreign policy.

He became deputy bureau chief in 1997 and bureau chief in March 2002. He has won many awards, including the 2005 William Allen White Foundation’s national citation from his alma mater, the University of Kansas.

Bussey (right) joined the WSJ Chicago bureau in 1983 and worked as a reporter in Cleveland and Detroit before joining Page One as an editor in 1988. He was Tokyo bureau chief and economics editor before becoming foreign editor in 1992. In 2002, he was named deputy ME and later editor of WSJ Asia.

During his tenure overseeing foreign coverage, the Journal won three Pulitzers for international reporting, and Bussey wrote a first-person account of Sept. 11, 2001, that was part of our Pulitzer Prize-winning package of the terrorist attacks. He’s a Dartmouth grad.

FOX BIZ NETWORK HIRINGS

Fox Business Network hired a number of anchors and reporters for its Oct. 15 launch. Peter Barnes, Jenna Lee, Nicole Petallides and Cody Willard were hired as anchors, and Jeff Flock, Shibani Joshi and Connell McShane have been hired as reporters.

Barnes joins from his position as Washington bureau chief for Hearst-Argyle. He previously served as Washington bureau chief for TechTV and before that, as vice president and anchor for JAGfn.com. From 1993 to 1998, Barnes was a Washington correspondent for CNBC, where he anchored "Capital Gains" and received a Cable ACE Award.

Lee was formerly a news anchor and reporter for Forbes.com, where she provided daily market updates and covered economic data and breaking news from Wall Street. Prior to this, Lee served as a writer and segment producer for NY1’s “Fortune Business Report” where she covered the markets, real estate and personal finance.

Petallides joins from Bloomberg Television where she was an anchor for “Bloomberg Business Report” and “Bloomberg Market Update,” based at the New York Stock Exchange. Before this, Petallides was an assistant producer for CNBC’s live daily reports from the NYSE.

Willard (right) writes a monthly investment column for The Financial Times and appeared regularly on CNBC’s "Kudlow & Company" from 2004 to 2006. He founded the investment management company CL Willard Capital in 2002. Willard is the author of the monthly investment newsletter TheCodyReport.net and an adjunct professor at Seton Hall University.

Flock, who is based in Chicago, spent 24 years at CNN in various capacities, most recently as Chicago bureau chief and correspondent where he managed coverage of the Midwestern region and covered some of the nation’s top business news stories.

Joshi, based in New York, joins from her role as a reporter covering breaking news for News 12 Westchester. Previously, Joshi was a producer for Reuters Television and TIMES NOW, the joint venture news channel with The Times of India, where she produces news packages and interviews broadcast all over India.

McShane, also based in New York, joins from Bloomberg Television where he served as an anchor and reporter with “Evening Edition,” “On the Markets” and “Marketweek.” He also reported live from the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ.

BOSS WATCH

Carl Lavin becomes managing editor of Forbes.com. He had been deputy managing editor for online and multimedia for the Philadelphia Inquirer…Dennis Berman (left) becomes deals editor at The Wall Street Journal. Berman had been the lead M&A reporter at the paper. Also, Rich Hunter takes over the Journal’s tech bureau in New York. He will also remain the top editor of the media and marketing team in New York…Rob Wells becomes Dow Jones Newswires bureau chief in Washington. He had been deputy bureau chief since May 2002 and replaces John Connor, who retired…Glenn Hunter, the editor of the Dallas Business Journal, leaves to become executive editor of Dallas CEO magazine…Cathy Gainor, the business editor at the Washington Times overseeing tech coverage, leaves to become AME of the Washington Examiner…William Westhoven becomes biz editor of the Parsippany Daily Record in New Jersey. He had previously worked for the Gannett paper for seven years.

UPPER EAST SIDE

Peter Goodman, an economics reporter at the Washington Post, leaves for a job to cover economics for The New York Times…Chris Condon moves to Bloomberg News’ Boston office to cover mutual funds. He had been with the Financial Times covering Hungary, Romania and Slovenia…Nicole Wong joins the Boston Globe biz desk to cover travel and tourism. She had been a biz reporter at the San Jose Mercury News…Nancy Trejos becomes the personal finance reporter at the Washington Post. She had previously covered real estate….Laura McCandlish joins the biz desk of the Baltimore Sun to cover the airport and the Port of Baltimore. She had been in the Carroll County bureau covering county government and crime…Kathy Shwiff joins the rewrite desk at Dow Jones Newswires. She had been the business editor of the Daily Record in New Jersey. Also joining Dow Jones is Holly Henschen as a reporter covering commodities. And Romy Varghese joins Dow Jones Newswires to cover corporate debt after working at the Allentown (Pa.) Morning Call. Meanwhile, the wire service splits its real estate coverage. Angela Pruitt begins coverage of commercial RE, while SABEW board member Dawn Wotapka takes on residential RE.

DOWN SOUTH

Tim Henderson, who wrote the Tech Q&A column for The Miami Herald, leaves the paper to move to New York…Rachel Pleasant (right) becomes editor of the Polk County Business Journal in central Florida. She had been with the Lakeland Ledger…Mark Tosczak leaves the Triad Business Journal in Greensboro to work for PR firm RLF Communications…Oscar Pedro Musibay, previously the Miami-Dade real estate reporter for The Daily Business Review, joins The South Florida Business Journal to cover the same beat. Paul Brinkmann also joins the weekly paper to cover legal and environmental issues. He had been at the Green Bay Press-Gazette in Wisconsin…

MIDWEST MOVES

Ben Klayman begins covering the business of sports for Reuters out of its Chicago bureau. He has been head of the manufacturing and capital goods team…Henry Gomez moves from the real estate beat on the Cleveland Plain Dealer’s biz desk to covering City Hall for metro…John Stoll joins The Wall Street Journal to cover the Detroit auto industry. He had been Detroit bureau chief for Dow Jones Newswires.

WEST COAST CHANGES

Julie Tripp, (right) the personal finance columnist at The Oregonian, accepts the paper’s buyout offer and will leave on Nov. 30. She has been at the paper since 1978 and with the business desk since 1983…Tyler Christensen, a business reporter for The Missoulian in Montana, becomes the paper’s opinions editor…Joseph DeLeon moves to Seattle to be closer to family and has been freelancing for The Seattle Times and The Puget Sound Business Journal. He previously wrote for the biz desk of The Frederick (Md.) News-Post.

GLOSSY GOINGS

Conde Nast Portfolio ME Blaise Zerega becomes deputy editor of the monthly business glossy. The magazine hires Jacob Lewis from the New Yorker to take over Zerega’s ME spot…Business 2.0 editor at large Erick Schonfeld (left) becomes co-editor of the TechCrunch blog…Dan Gearino joins Business North Carolina magazine to write a monthly column. He had been with The (Raleigh) News & Observer. Former AP reporter Scott Mooneyham also joins the monthly as a contributing editor to write a column about the intersection between business and government….Luke Mullins joins U.S. News & World Report to write for the Money & Business section. He had been with American Banker.

ON THE AIR

Erik Schatzker, a longtime Bloomberg News journalist who has been the Canada bureau chief and also the team leader in New York overseeing Wall Street coverage, is leaving the news service side to join Bloomberg TV…Alexis Glick of Fox Business Network is promoted to VP of business news from director of biz news.

ON THE WEB

Daniel P. Ray, editor in chief at Bankrate.com for six years, has taken the same post at CreditCards.com, where he is establishing its new consumer-oriented, personal finance newsroom…SABEW charter member Herb Drill, of Jacksonville, Fla., joins the new Web site, www.Disaboom.com, as a business and profiles writer.

BACK TO SCHOOL

Robert J. Dowling, former managing editor of BusinessWeek International, joins the faculty of China’s Tsinghua University to help it start a master’s program in business journalism.

IN MEMORY

Longtime Forbes editor James Michaels (right) dies in October at the age of 86. Michaels spent 45 years with the magazine, joining in 1954 as an assistant managing editor. He was managing editor from 1957 to 1961, when he became editor. He remained editor until 1999, and then became a vice president of the company. He is crediting with pioneering coverage of mutual funds, and he worked with Malcolm Forbes to launch the Forbes 400 list of the richest Americans, an issue that has become the magazine’s most popular each year. After serving in World War II, Michaels covered India for the United Press wire service, and he broke the story of Mahatma Gandhi’s death in 1948.

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Posted Oct. 16, 2007