Charlotte Observer hires Smoot to cover health care/aviation/energy

Hannah Smoot

The Charlotte Observer has hired reporter Hannah Smoot to cover health care, aviation and energy.

She will start in July.

Smoot replaces Cassie Cope, who left the paper in February for a job at Honeywell.

Smoot is currently a city government and politics reporter at the Rock Hill Herald in South Carolina. Both papers are owned by McClatchy.

She is a graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill, where she was managing editor of The Daily Tar Heel.

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.