Why a biz reporter no longer covers just business

Kevin Bouffard, formerly a full-time business reporter for the Lakeland Ledger in Florida, blogs about why he’s now covering non-business stories in adddition to the citrus industry.

Bouffard writes, “For example, two years ago The Ledger had four business reporters writing for a separate four-to-six-page business section. Earlier this year, Business was downsized to two pages and combined with the Sports section, similar to our parent company, the New York Times, although business news leads the combined NYT section while sports news leads at The Ledger. (No comment, see above.)Â

“In such an environment, when offered the chance to move to Haines City and cover local news, I agreed. Mr. and Mrs. Bouffard didn’t raise a dummy. (A matter of opinion, I admit.)

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“The good news is that I’ve retained the citrus beat (primarily due to the fact nobody else wanted it), so I will continue reporting on the ups and downs of citrus growers, processors and packers.

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“The bad news is that, given the realities of being asked to do more with less (as Bob Crawford was fond of saying, not referring to his travel arrangements), the amount of time and energy available to citrus will diminish. You may have already noticed I haven’t posted a blog entry in three weeks, as the effort of wrapping things up in Business and getting established in four communities — Haines City, Polk City, Lake Hamilton and Lake Alfred — has occupied my work weeks recently.”

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Read more here.