Maybe I should be pitching stories to the Columbia Journalism Review. CJR, the venerable bimonthly covering the news industry that Columbia University’s Journalism School publishes, just filed this story about the demise of the daily newspaper standalone business section. I wrote about this back in February, when the Denver Post announced it was folding its daily business section into the Metro section most days of the week, soon after the Orange County Register had announced similar plans.
My thoughts: Even though daily papers’ business sections are shrinking, the need for local business news isn’t. If anything it’s stronger than ever given the effect the bad economy is having on so many different types of businesses.
Who’s picking up the slack? In some areas it’s business weeklies, in others it’s bloggers. Some regional business magazines are holding their own. Maybe all people really need is a good RSS reader. Or maybe there are opportunities to be had for Web-savvy reporters who could build a company around a local business news aggregator site.