Crain’s Chicago hires Barker to cover food and consumer products

Dalton Barker

Crain’s Chicago Business has hired Dalton Barker to cover food and consumer products.

He started earlier this week and replaced Brigid Sweeney. He will also cover retailing, restaurant, media and marketing, and beer and spirit companies.

Barker, 28, comes to Crain’s from the Chicago office of Fastmarkets/Euromoney, where he’d covered the North American metals and manufacturing sectors since April 2015. Prior to Fastmarkets, he was a consultant at Chicago financial services firm Thomas White International and a commodities reporter at Bloomberg News in Chicago.

“Dalton is taking on a big beat,” says Crain’s Editor Ann Dwyer in a statement. “In his new role, he’ll be covering some of the biggest companies in the area — McDonald’s, Kraft Heinz, MillerCoors, Conagra, Beam Suntory, Mondelez, Walgreens, Leo Burnett and Tribune — as well as some of the smallest, such as chef-centric restaurants and food startups. He’s eager to dive in.”

Barker grew up in Groveland, a small town outside Peoria, and graduated cum laude from the University of Missouri at Columbia, where he received a bachelor’s degree in journalism.

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.