Categories: OLD Media Moves

Eliminating the standalone business section

Lisa Snedeker of Media Life magazine takes a look Wednesday at how some daily newspapers have eliminated the standalone business news section.

Snedeker wrote, “Instead of stand-alone business sections, the trend is toward a single page of business news, or business stories spread through the paper. Often it means fewer business reporters and less local business news.

“The irony, of course, is that this is happening precisely at the time when papers across the country are talking up hyper-local coverage, putting more resources–reporters and editors–on the streets to cover the local news while cutting back on national and international coverage.

“The push for more local coverage is driven by the best of intentions: to halt the declines in circulation that have plagued dailies in recent years.

“So why then the slashing of local business sections?”

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.