Des Moines biz columnist, biz reporter accept buyout

A business columnist and a business reporter for the Des Moines Register, a Gannett newspaper, have accepted the paper’s early retirement offer and will be leaving the paper, according to a story on its website.

Business columnist David Elbert and Joanne Boeckman are among 11 Register employees who have accepted the offer, according to the story. The company’s early retirement offer was made to employees who are at least 56 years old, and had worked for Gannett for at least 20 years of service.

Boeckman, a University of Oklahoma graduate, is the community business reporter for the paper. She blogs about businesses opening and closing in Des Moines.

In 2005, Elbert was a Best in Business winner in the column writing category from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers.

The judges wrote, “It’s hard to find a buried lede or a hedged opinion in an Elbert column. Last rites for Iowa’s quixotic rain forest project were said and done by Elbert’s second line, and you were delighted to read on to get details. His contrarian piece on the failure of big state incentives to save jobs at a Maytag plant began this way: ‘Government can’t do everything, and there are times when it should do nothing. This week we saw a bad example of government trying to do too much. Fortunately, it failed.’ Elbert’s columns are also well reported, as demonstrated by his Kafkaesque tale of Pella flack who lost her job when a lying co-worker told stories to superiors.”