Minnesota paper hires new business reporter

Brooks Johnson

Brooks Johnson, a business reporter at The Columbian in Vancouver, Wash., has been hired as a business reporter at the Duluth News Tribune in Minnesota.

He starts Aug. 29.

“I’ll be covering the businesses and economy of Duluth, Minn., with major regional industries ranging from resource extraction and shipping to aviation, tourism and health care,” said Johnson in an email to Talking Biz News. “I hear the brewery scene is pretty swell, too.”

Johnson had joined the business news desk at The Columbian in December 2015. He moved to the business desk after the departure of Aaron Corvin. Earlier this summer, The Columbian laid off its business editor, Gordon Oliver.

Johnson is a University of Montana School of Journalism graduate, an alumni of the Dow Jones News Fund copy editing internship program and previously worked at the Idaho Falls Post Register and more recently at The Daily News in Longview, Wash.

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.