New senior business editor in Atlanta

Kathy Brister, a former business reporter and editor at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, is becoming the senior editor for business and news on the “News & Information” side of the newspaper. It’s a new position.

Brister will become responsible for the business reporter clusters and a cluster of reporters on the state desk. The business reporter clusters don’t include the business and sports cluster on the “Enterprise” side that is run by former business reporter and assistant business editor Henry Unger. Brister had been senior editor/planning on the enterprise side.

Brister joined the paper in 2000 and covered technology and telecommunications. She had also been the business day editor and had supervised a team of general assignment reporters on the business desk. She was interim Sunday editor for about a year before the newsroom reorganization. She had previously been at the Knoxville News-Sentinel.

The Atlanta newsroom reorganized in 2007, resulting in non-traditional titles for the business news desk.

In addition, sources at the paper say that Home Depot beat reporter Patti Bond and Coca-Cola beat reporter Duane Stanford have yet to be replaced. Both left in the last two months of 2007. Reporter Leon Stafford has been filling in on the Coke beat.

Disclosure: I worked on the AJC business desk from 1994 to 1997.