Upstate Business Journal hires senior business reporter

Robbie Ward has been hired by the Upstate Business Journal in South Carolina to be its senior business reporter.

He will start on May 4. Ward will cover all sorts of industry, job population and other growth-related issues facing the Upstate region, particularly Greenville and Spartanburg counties

Ward previously worked for the Greenville News in South Carolina and the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal. He’s also been a stringer for Reuters and a staff writer at the Scranton Times-Tribune in Pennsylvania. He also spent five years as a research writer for Mississippi State University.

“This region’s growth trends and challenges combined with a vibrant downtown life make it a dream gig for a business, enterprise and data reporter,” Ward said in an email to Talking Biz News. “I look forward to digging beyond the surface to tell the fascinating stories waiting for someone willing to search and find.”

Ward has a bachelor’s degree from Southern Mississippi and a master’s degree from Mississippi State.

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.