West Virginia paper hires new business reporter

Brandon Roberts has been hired to be the business reporter at the Huntington (W.Va.) Herald-Dispatch.

Roberts will write stories about local businesses – either Fortune 500 companies or the corner bakery – and other topics. He is sometimes given specific assignments by his editor, but he is also developing leads based on current events.

“Just as I would covering any other beat, I am responsible for seeking out and setting up interviews with people who have information and analyzing the information gathered to determine which facts are pertinent to the story,” said Roberts in an email to Talking Biz News.

“In order to write understandable articles, business reporters often need to understand not only journalism, but accounting, finance, the stock markets and industry jargon,” added Roberts in the email. “I made the decision to become a business reporter for the challenge of the beat and to really test the limits of my personal abilities as a journalist.”

Roberts was a managing editor (2005-2009) at The Highland County Press in Hillsboro, Ohio, and night editor (2009) at the Georgetown News-Graphic in Georgetown, Kentucky, and public relations director (2009-2013) at the Pike County, Ky., government.

In August 2013, he  returned to the newspaper business as a reporter at The Tribune in Ironton, Ohio.