Biz journalist Mracek joins St. Louis Fed

Longtime business journalist Karen Mracek has joined the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis as a media relations coordinator.

She started on Monday.

Mracek most recently was a Federal Reserve Board reporter for Market News International, where she was also at one time acting managing editor for the global news service.

Mracek was previously with Kiplinger Washington Editors where she did business forecasting for The Kiplinger Letter. She provided commentary on a variety of economic indicators including employment, inflation, housing, consumer credit and trade.

She also worked at the Des Moines Register as the assistant business editor, where she covered banking and financial services, was a business reporter at the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson and led a regional business magazine in Eastern Iowa.

She has an economics degree from the University of Florida.

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.