Categories: OLD Media Moves

Cincinnati business reporter’s firing changed to buyout

Jim McNair, the Cincinnati Enquirer business reporter who was fired from the paper last August amid complaints about his objectivity, has since fought the paper about his termination and apparently won some measure of satisfaction.

In an e-mail Sunday evening, McNair stated, “This is what I can say: My termination of last August has been converted to the voluntary acceptance of a buyout.

“That’s all I’m legally able to say about the subject.”

McNair joined the Enquirer in 2001 from the Miami Herald during the Gannett paper’s attempt to beef up its business coverage. Last year, Talking Biz News wrote about McNair and how a local company, Berkeley Premium Nutraceuticals, had taken out a full-page ad in the paper complaining about his coverage. However, the CEO of that company was then indicted.

McNair’s firing drew an outpouring of comments from other journalists — and from his critics.

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.