Free Press biz editor adds enterprise duties

Christopher Kirkpatrick, the business editor of the Detroit Free Press, has taken on additional duties overseeing enterprise reporting at the paper.

His new title is director of business and local enterprise. In this role, he’ll be back-up editor in planning, editing and helping produce the Sunday paper. And he’ll continue to oversee the business department and will be working more closely with both business and metro editors on selected enterprise.

And he’ll work with reporting teams, Web editors and others to help devise strong digital presentations for the projects the business and metro desks are producing.

Kirkpatrick became business editor in 2012. He grew up in the Detroit area and began his journalism career in 1994 at The Herald Sun in Durham, N.C., where he covered a variety of beats, including legislative issues, and won state and national awards for his work. He moved to the Toledo Blade in 2004 and worked as an economic development and projects reporter. He was a lead writer on a year-long investigative project that uncovered widespread corruption in Ohio state government.

The reporting effort was honored as a finalist for the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in public service and was a finalist for the Goldsmith Prize in Investigative Reporting from Harvard. The coverage won a Gerald Loeb Award for best business writing, as well as National Headliner Awards in investigative reporting and the grand prize category.

Kirkpatrick left Toledo for The Charlotte Observer in 2006. He worked in business there and covered energy and economic development issues. Among his efforts, he helped cover a US Airways takeover bid that won a Society of American Business Editors and Writers award for breaking news coverage in 2007. Kirkpatrick returned to Toledo for about a year as a reporter and occasional editor before joining the Free Press.