Categories: OLD Media Moves

Heffernan, former BusinessWeek Atlanta bureau chief, dies at 83

Tony Heffernan, who was the BusinessWeek Atlanta bureau chief and later the business editor of the Gwinnett Daily News, has died at the age of 83.

Dan Kolber writes for the Atlanta Business Chronicle, “In 1970 he went to work for Reuters in New York City, his hometown. He was immediately dispatched to Ft. Benning, in Columbus, Ga., to cover the court martial trial of William Calley, who was a U.S. Army officer convicted of murdering 22 unarmed South Vietnamese civilians in the My Lai Massacre, which occurred on March 16, 1968.

“During the massacre 500 helpless members of the My Lai hamlet, mostly women and children and the elderly, were lined up and executed. Once again, Tony’s reporting had a significant impact and played a role in hastening the end of the Viet Nam war.

“In 1973 Tony was in charge of Business Week’s Atlanta office. He and his wife Virgie settled down in Ansley Park. If you have lived in Atlanta for any length of time, you most certainly have read some of Tony’s writing. He was the Business Editor for the Gwinnett Daily News, and when the New York Times shuttered that, Tony freelanced for virtually every newspaper and magazine in Atlanta.”

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.