Richmond daily’s Monday tabloid celebrates 30 years

Gregory Gilligan, the business editor of the Richmond Times-Dispatch, writes about the paper’s Monday business tabloid, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary.

Gilligan writes, “Metro Business has been — and continues to be — a must-read on Monday mornings since it was introduced June 16, 1986, in The Richmond News Leader under the direction of Thomas A. Silvestri, now president and publisher of the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

“The section is going strong after 30 years. Readers and business people still regularly tell us how important the section is to them.

“Lots of newspapers across the country started Monday business sections in the 1980s, as business journalism became increasingly important.

“Yet most metro daily newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune and The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, eliminated their Monday business sections in the past decade as advertising dried up, said Chris Roush, a professor of business journalism at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.”

Read more here.

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.