Crain’s Detroit editor Smith says goodbye

Jennette Smith

Jennette Smith, the outgoing editor in chief of Crain’s Detroit Business, said goodbye to readers in a column posted on its website.

Smith writes, “I’m proud of Crain’s Detroit Business for its 31-year track record of chronicling those hard-wrought successes — and the region’s challenges.

“There will be capable hands to tell those stories. I know that the plans underway for a newsroom reorganization led by Associate Publisher Ron Fournier and Managing Editor Michael Lee will make this beloved publication even better. And top-notch business beat reporting will always remain at the core. I’m getting out of the way partly to fund the plan.

“I want to thank Mary Kramer and the Crain family for taking a chance in 1998 on a 23-year-old kid freshly minted from Michigan State University journalism school, with short stints at The Macomb Daily and The Times Herald in Port Huron. And my first two bosses here: Cindy Goodaker and Phil Nussel.

“Sometimes, when you have a vision, it all works out.”

Read more here.

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.