A business editor before he became publisher

Rolfe Neill

Rick Thomas of Business Insider profiles former Charlotte Observer publisher Rolfe Neill.

Thomas writes, “The Observer hired him to open a bureau in Gastonia. One year later, he was offered a promotion as ‘business editor’ at the newspaper’s downtown office. It was a one-person department, so he was also the business writer.

“Neill went home and told his first wife, Rosemary Boney. ‘She said, ‘Business editor? You hate business,’’ Neill recalls. ‘I said, ‘Well, I thought maybe I could learn something about it because I sure don’t know anything about it.’’

“He started reading The Wall Street Journal. (It’s still his favorite national newspaper.) He wrote briefs about new companies, covered textile club luncheons and profiled people. Business news, he discovered, was a good fit. He connected well with people in business.

“Higher-ups took notice. When the Observer’s parent company, Knight Newspapers, purchased The Coral Gables Times in 1961, Neill was invited to manage the south Florida paper. There, he learned how to run a business.”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.