Categories: OLD Media Moves

Tennessean biz editor moving to new position amid overhaul

Lance Williams, the business editor at The Tennessean, is moving to a new position at the daily newspaper in Nashville.

Starting next month, Williams will be an audience analyst for the Gannett paper.

On his Facebook page, he writes, “It’s a brand new role, which is a big reason why I’m so excited. I will be deep-diving into the booming field of data and analytics to figure out how people are reading our stories right now … and more importantly, to figure out what topics and stories will help us bring more local readers back to our great content every day.

“The best part? I still to get work with a great team of reporters every day, coaching them on ways to share their work with more and more readers.“

The change is part of an overhaul of positions at the Gannett paper. In an email to Talking Biz News, Williams explained it this way:

Under the new structure, some of the previous editor titles like Business, Lifestyles and Sports won’t be used anymore.
Here’s a way to look at it in business terms:
Entrepreneurs rely on experts like attorneys, accountants and bankers to help them grow their business.
In this new structure, reporters are similar to entrepreneurs. The new positions surrounding those enterprising reporters are designed to be experts in key subject areas, such as storytelling, digital optimization and visuals.
Everyone works together to try and reach the ultimate goal: growing local readers who want to read our content wherever it can be found.
To answer your other question, we will have 6-7 biz reporters on staff when all the hiring is complete. (I say 6-to-7 because the music biz reporter will probably work with both our music team and our business team, depending on the topic).
One of the most exciting moves is the promotion of Jamie McGee to the role of Emerging Nashville columnist (covering issues related to tech, entrepreneurship and Music City’s growing economy).

Williams was previously the editor of the Nashville Business Journal before joining the Tennessean in 2012. He was named editor of the Nashville Business Journal in spring 2008, having previously led the Austin Business Journal. Williams joined American City Business Journals, NBJ’s parent company, in 2002 as a reporter and editor with the Cincinnati Business Courier.

During Williams’ tenure in Nashville, the Nashville Business Journal won American City Business Journals’ General Excellence Award in 2010 and was a finalist for the award in 2012.

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.