Louisiana biz editor takes on metro editor duties

Ken Stickney, the business editor of the Lafayette Advertiser in Louisiana, is taking on the metro editor duties at the paper as well.

Stickney writes, “But I’m delighted to hold on to my business editor job as well, writing this column and being your business news contact, less for its ‘title’ and more for its content. That’s because in three short months I’ve come to appreciate what I suspected was out there all along for business reporters: a good seat to watch the real-life drama that unfolds every day in the business world. In three months in Lafayette, I’ve reported on agribusiness and the health care industry, insurance and banking, distilling rum and building homes. In short, things that really matter to people.

“I’ve stood on a dock in Delcambre, talking about fish, walked the hallowed halls of B.I. Moody III College of Business Administration at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and somewhere in rural St. Martin Parish, climbed a workover rig that was bound for Alaska.

“I talked jobs with hopeful people at job fairs. You want real-life drama? Talk with folks who need work and are pressing hard to find it.

“And nothing — nothing — can match covering oil and gas. It comes with its own vernacular, which I’m still trying to follow, and myriad, taxing demands on my aging, too-shallow intellect.”

Read more here.