Austin paper names new tech reporter

Lilly Rockwell

Lilly Rockwell, who has been covering City Hall for the Austin American-Statesman, has moved to the tech beat at the paper.

She had been covering City Hall and an electric utility owned by the Texas city since May 2014.

Before that, Rockwell was an associate editor at Florida Trend magazine, where she wrote feature and investigative stories for each issue and was responsible for the writing the “Around the State” section about Northeast Florida. She also helped copy edit the magazine each month and assisted in promoting the magazine in social media.

While at Florida Trend, Rockwell won a national Society of Professional Journalists award for a story she did on the state’s failure to aggressively investigate Medicaid fraud.

Rockwell had previously worked at the American-Statesman from May 2006 to April 2009 as a business reporter covering several Fortune 500 companies, including Whole Foods Market Inc., as well as the biotechnology, video gaming and advertising industries.

She is a University of Texas graduate.

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.