Mississippi paper's plans to beef up business coverage

The Hattiesburg American daily in Mississippi has plans to boost its business coverage, according to executive editor Kathleen Williams.

In an e-mail, Williams said, “Our staff isn’t very big, and right now biz coverage is a bit hit and miss. All reporters cover economic activity in their respective geographic beats, and one reporter covers overall economic development, but also covers the city of Hattiesburg, which take a big chunk of his time.”

The American runs a partial business page three days a week and two pages of local biz news on Sunday. Much of its business coverage goes in the local news pages. The paper also has a few local business columnists, from a personal finance person to one who comments on workplace issues to another who writes advice for small business.Â

It also has a tax specialist who writes about the Gulf Opportunity Zone –the area was included in after Hurricane Katrina, and it has meant a lot of investment and tax writeoff opportunities.

“This area is growing fairly rapidly, and there’s been an explosion of retail/restaurants (mostly chain) in the last year but small business is still the core of our market,” said Williams, who joined the Gannett paper in June 2005. “There is some manufacturing and agriculture. Two major hospitals here have spawned a slew of medical offices, and the area has a very high per capital number of doctors.

“Our intent is to hire a PT biz writer who will write more profiles of local businesses, but also do more trend/issue stories that connect the area more broadly. He/she would also cover the housing market more. And the labor market.

“We’ll get in more names and faces, including stuff like ribbon-cuttings, promotions, meetings, etc. We’ll probably do some quick hit formatted features, like ‘Made in the Pine Belt’ or ‘My first job’ – stuff that connects with our readers in a personal way.”