Changes and new hires on Mercury News biz desk

The San Jose Mercury News business desk has named an interim business editor and hired new reporters to replace some of those that it’s lost in recent months.

Maria Shao was promoted to deputy business editor/enterprise and serves as acting business editor. She was assistant business editor at the paper since 2000 after being an editor and reporter at the Boston Globe, Business Week, Asian Wall Street Journal and Wall Street Journal.

Business editor Todd Woody left earlier this year for a spot as assistant managing editor of Business 2.0.

As reported back in August, Stephen Trousdale also became a deputy business editor at the paper, moving over from his business editor position at the Contra Costa Times.

As far as the reporters go, Constance Loizos joins the business desk as venture capital/start-ups reporter for Silicon Valley, succeeding Matt Marshall who goes independent with his VentureBeat online column and blog that’s syndicated by the Mercury News. Loizos previously worked at the Venture Capital Journal and Private Equity Week.

Ryan Blitstein joins as a general assignment/online reporter in business and also watches the software beat. Before the Mercury News, he worked at SF Weekly in San Francisco and Red Herring.

Troy Wolverton joins as consumer electronics and entertainment reporter from The Street.com, where he was a senior writer. He succeeds John Boudreau, who becomes a reporter on globalization, a new beat.

These changes are in addition to the ones we’ve previously reported, such as columnist Mike Langberg leaving the paper and reporters Michelle Quinn and Dean Takahashi being named new columnists.