Maine business reporter leaving for marijuana publication

Whit Richardson, a reporter for the Portland Press-Herald, is leaving the Maine newspaper.

Richardson, whose last day is Thursday, says he will become founding editor of a new online publication covering the business and politics of the legal marijuana industry.

The publication will be called 4Front Daily. It’s a spin-off of an existing consulting company called 4Front Ventures.

“I’ll be taking my professional business journalism experience and applying it to one of the country’s fastest-growing industries,” said Richardson in an email to Talking Biz News.

Richardson has been writing about Maine startups and entrepreneurs for nearly a decade. He previously was business editor at the Bangor Daily News and also worked at MaineBiz.

He’s a Connecticut College graduate.

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.