How a Maine newspaper is increasing its business news coverage

The Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram has been amplifying its business coverage through key hires and a realignment of resources.

Earlier this month, the Press Herald hired me, former editor of Mainebiz, as business editor. Two weeks prior, veteran business reporter Whit Richardson joined the reporting staff, bringing the newspaper’s complement of business journalists to seven.

“Business news is a core component of any great newspaper, and we want to provide the broadest, deepest, most comprehensive business coverage in Maine,” said Steve Greenlee, managing editor. “That starts with hiring the best business journalists you can find, and we have done exactly that.”

The 40,000-circulation newspaper focuses on southern Maine and offers its readers in-depth business coverage of key Maine industries such as tourism, fishing and forest products, as well as southern Maine’s growing composites and technology cluster.

Richardson has focused on business reporting since 2007, and most recently was business editor for the Bangor Daily News. I spent five-and-a-half years at Mainebiz, a statewide, business-to-business publication, and five years before that as business reporter for the Sun Journal in Lewiston, Maine.

Rounding out the business team are J. Craig Anderson, formerly a business reporter with the Arizona Republic and the Business Journal of Phoenix; Jessica B. Hall, a 17-year veteran of Reuters, and longtime Press Herald reporters Tux Turkel,  Edward D. Murphy and Tom Bell.

Coultas has been a journalist for 30 years, spending the last eight reporting and writing about Maine businesses. As Mainebiz editor, she was responsible for all the editorial content published in print and online, and oversaw the editorial content of Mainebiz events and recognition programs. She has a special interest in reporting on banking, manufacturing and the Lewiston-Auburn area, where she spent 22 years of her career.