Lesley Weidenbener: Where should IBJ put reporting staff?

A change in the IBJ newsroom is giving us a chance to rethink what we cover. And I’m interested in your thoughts.

IBJ’s state government and economic development reporter recently left us for a new job. And before we advertise the position, we’re trying to think hard about what it is we most need.

IBJ created a state government position in 2018. Previously, we had a reporter who covered both city and state government, which could be a tough assignment during the legislative session.

We wanted to do more with the Legislature. The number of Statehouse reporters had been dwindling, and we believed decisions that affected business were being made at the Statehouse with little coverage. So we split the government beat into two positions and launched The Rundown newsletter, a move that increased coverage of the Legislature, the governor and politics.

Since then, the number of organizations that cover state government has increased. One of those outlets—the Indiana Capital Chronicle—has a four-person Statehouse team that offers well-rounded coverage on a number of key issues and legislation and lets IBJ and other organizations republish its work.

Due in part to the Capital Chronicle, IBJ tweaked the state government beat the last time the position was open, emphasizing economic development as a key part of the coverage and slightly deemphasizing legislative and political coverage.

Now, we’re considering additional changes that further deemphasize legislative coverage in favor of more stories about higher education, particularly in the areas of research, commercialization and the business of universities, as well as additional coverage of other education issues, including workforce training and high school career development.

That doesn’t mean we wouldn’t cover the Legislature. There will still be bills we care a lot about, including legislation related to the areas I just outlined. But our reporter wouldn’t necessarily be there every day, regardless of what was on the agenda.

We’re talking internally about ways to tweak the coverage areas for other reporters, as well. Currently, we list our primary beats as these: commercial real estate, health care and life sciences, technology, banking and finance, retail and restaurants, city government, economic development, state government, and North of 96th, a beat that is essentially suburban coverage of Boone and Hamilton counties.

Our secondary beats are also important: arts and culture, residential real estate, tourism and hospitality, utilities, philanthropy, and the business of sports.

Already, we have decided to tackle more coverage of entrepreneurship and small business. To that end, we plan to revamp our tech newsletter to be about venture capital, startups and entrepreneurship, which happens to cover a lot of tech companies.

But there are other areas we are not covering well enough and aren’t quite sure how to address. Manufacturing, for example, is not assigned to a specific person. Environmental issues are roughly tied to utilities, but the coverage should obviously be broader than that. We worry that we don’t do enough with defense and military, federal issues, ag tech and farming, and transportation and logistics.

Trying to get all the things we care about assigned to a reporter who has enough time to cover them is increasingly difficult!

So what do you think? What are the industries you want to read more about? What are the areas you think we spend too much time on?

I would love to hear what you think. Email me at lweidenbener@ibj.com with “coverage” in the subject line and let me know. We’re listening.•

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Weidenbener is editor and assistant publisher of IBJ. Email her at lweidenbener@ibj.com.