ACBJ’s coverage of NY and Chicago part of plan to serve national audience

Emory Thomas

On Friday, Talking Biz News posted an item about how American City Business Journals had hired a well-known Chicago business journalist to help it start covering business news in that market.

In addition, ACBJ will begin covering New York business news as well. The Charlotte-based owner of business newspapers has papers in 40 markets, but Chicago and New York’s business newspapers are owned by Crain’s.

We asked Emory Thomas, the chief content officer for ACBJ and the former editor of its Seattle paper, for an explanation about its strategy.

Thomas replied Saturday night with the following:

Our New York and Chicago coverage will appear on dropdowns off the bizjournals site, just like the rest of our business coverage in all our other cities. Not going to comment on specifics of staffing or coverage. Important to note, though, that our effort here is substantially about serving the existing national audience we have for ACBJ content on digital platforms.

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.