ACBJ creating national design desks, laying off designers

American City Business Journals, which operates 40 print business newspapers around the country, is creating four desks to design its papers, a move that will result in eight layoffs.

The four teams will each have a creative director, three senior designers and three designers. Each regional design team will be responsible for the design of 10 papers. The regional teams are based largely on geography.

The teams will be remote and will work in ACBJ’s newsrooms throughout the country. The layoffs are expected to save the company $1 million, which will be reinvested.

The laid-off designers will be leaving in October. The national design desk will produce its first editions on Oct. 9. All 40 ACBJ papers will be designed by the team.

The four creative directors are Laurie Lawrence, Ian Lawson, Vince Chiaramonte and Ellen Collier.

Lawrence is the creative director at the national content team at ACBJ. She was the senior designer at the Washington Business Journal. Lawson is the lead designer at the San Francisco Business Times.

Chiaramonte has been the assistant managing editor for print at the Buffalo News. Collier has been the creative director at the Washington Business Journal.

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.