WaPo's Jerry Knight to take early retirement offer

The Washington Post’s Jerry Knight, who has been covering Washington business for the past 28 years and writes the “Washington Investing” column on Mondays, has decided to take the company’s buyout offer. His last column appeared in Monday’s paper.

Knight says he will use his time to actually invest in local companies that he has been writing about.

Knight writes, “I’ve already opened an account at E-Trade, the big online financial services firm whose executive offices are in Ballston. Once I turn off my computer for the last time and turn in my building pass, I’ll find out whether I really know what I’ve been writing about.

“I’ve learned a lot since the last time I looked at Washington stocks as a potential investor rather than as a journalist. That was a time, some years back, when I wasn’t writing about local stocks so I went looking for one to put in my individual retirement account. Before I could do it, however, my job changed again and I was locked out of local investing.”

Read more here.

Knight isn’t the only well-known business journalist expected to leave the Post’s staff with the buyout. Personal finance columnist Albert Crenshaw is also expected to leave.