Memphis Business Journal co-founder dies

Barney DuBois, a journalist who helped start the Memphis Business Journal in 1979, died Saturday at the age of 68.

Jane Donahoe of the Business Journal writes, “DuBois was a fixture in the Memphis media scene since the 1960s, when he worked as a reporter for both The Commercial Appeal and the Memphis Press-Scimitar.

“But it was with the MBJ that DuBois spent the majority of his career. He co-founded the paper, the Mid-South’s first business weekly, with Ward Archer Sr. in 1979. The pair launched affiliate publication Nashville Business Journal in 1985.

“DuBois worked as news editor and editor of MBJ as well as publisher and CEO of the papers’ parent company until 1997, when he sold the publications to American City Business Journals Inc., a division of Advance Publishing which is owned by the Newhouse family.

“Friends and former colleagues will remember DuBois, who commonly referred to himself as an ‘old hippie,’ for his humor, intelligence and journalistic prowess.”

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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.