Matt Kempner, who has been business editor and business columnist for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, has taken the publication’s buyout offer and will be leaving on Dec. 31.
Kempner says he’s “hoping to stretch into new and different things in retirement, but I may still search for interesting stories.”
He has been with the paper for 32 years and most recently has been a senior reporter. He was business editor from 2009 to 2014 and a columnist from 2014 to 2018.
Kempner was also a business reporter at the paper, having covered the media beat and other topics such as growth and water. He also worked out of the paper’s Gwinnett County bureau at one point, and he previously worked at the Gwinnett Daily News, the former New York Times Co. paper that the Journal-Constitution purchased in the 1990s and closed.
Kempner is a University of Georgia graduate. He is a 2005 Society of American Business Editors and Writers Best in Business Award winner in the Enterprise category for a story he did with ex-colleague Maria Saporta on Home Depot’s corporate giving. In 2007, he was part of a team that won a Best in Business Award in the breaking news category for the coverage of the departure of Home Depot CEO Robert Nardelli.
Kempner once donned the brown of a UPS driver and drove around one day on a truck, delivering packages during Christmas.
