Amy Wenk
Amy Wenk connects major consumer brands with pocketbook issues, showing how decisions by Georgia’s biggest companies and broader economic forces filter down to prices, jobs and daily costs. She covers consumer brands, residential real estate and economic trends for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, with a beat built around the way corporate strategy and policy shifts affect households and local businesses. Her reporting blends company news, market data and clear explanations so readers understand both what is happening and what it means for their wallets.
Consumer brands and corporate decisions
Wenk’s core focus is on consumer-facing companies headquartered or heavily active in Georgia, including names like Coca-Cola, Home Depot and Chick-fil-A.
She reports on corporate strategy and leadership, such as coverage of a Georgia Fortune 500 packaging firm ousting its chief executive and investors pushing back against the board’s decision. Her work follows how these brands navigate pressures from tariffs, shifting consumer behavior and competition, often using earnings calls, regulatory filings and company statements to show how executives see the market. Before joining The Atlanta Journal-Constitution to launch the consumer brands beat in 2025, she spent years covering economic development and influential business figures for a regional business publication and editing community newspapers, which informs the way she traces connections between boardroom decisions and their impact on communities.
Pocketbook stories: fuel, prices and the cost of living
Wenk regularly turns broad economic trends into concrete pocketbook stories about fuel, prices and everyday costs. She has written about metro Atlanta gas prices, including how much they could fall around the Fourth of July, and followed up with pieces on Georgia diesel prices hitting record highs with “no end in sight,” using data and global context to explain why fuel remains expensive and what that means for households and freight-dependent businesses. Her reporting on Costco’s plans for a new store with a large gas station in Gwinnett County highlights how retailers use lower fuel prices and membership perks to attract cost-conscious shoppers in an era of elevated energy costs.
She brings the same lens to stories on tariff deadlines and the billions of dollars in tariff refunds Georgia public companies seek or recoup, translating complex trade disputes into clear stakes for consumer prices and business margins.
Economic trends, housing and financial institutions
Beyond brands and prices, Wenk tracks how interest rates, housing dynamics and financial-sector shifts shape the regional economy. In her coverage of whether a Federal Reserve rate cut will boost the metro housing market, she looks at pending sales data and mortgage trends to assess whether lower borrowing costs can revive demand or simply ease the pain of high prices and limited inventory. She carries that analysis into newsletter work such as Georgianomics, where she asks whether Atlanta is becoming a buyer’s market and highlights statistics on contracts, listings and broader economic momentum.
Her reporting on an $8.6 billion bank merger and the resulting hiring plans at a large regional banking firm shows how consolidation in financial services affects jobs, lending capacity and competition across the Southeast, tying institutional changes to practical outcomes for customers and communities.
Risk, disruption and pressure on Georgia companies
Wenk also covers the risks and disruptions that test consumer brands and other Georgia-based companies. She has reported on a ransomware attack that shut down U.S. production of Coca-Cola’s Fairlife dairy brand, detailing how a known hacker group claimed responsibility and how the company responded by halting operations at multiple plants.
In tariff and trade stories, she documents how companies pursue refunds or brace for new costs, and in her coverage of marketing and brand conferences she notes how business leaders grapple with consumer fear, trust and reputation in an era of polarized politics and constant digital scrutiny. Across these pieces, her distinguishing trait is an emphasis on how global conflicts, cybersecurity threats, regulatory shifts and marketing tactics ultimately bear on everyday experiences - what people pay at the pump, whether they can find a home and how resilient their local employers truly are.
4 more business journalists.
Aaron Karp
Aaron Karp is distinct for connecting airline networks, airport infrastructure, air cargo and policy. He is a senior editor at Air Transport World and has covered aviation since 1999. He has also worked as an editor for cargo-focused and daily aviation publications. His real beat is how airlines and airports respond to growth, regulation, trade conditions, sustainability pressures and technology changes. He covers route planning, network development, airport capacity, infrastructure, cargo flows, trade lanes, safety, air traffic control and future technology. He reports through news, features, opinion pieces, briefings and podcasts. He uses data, executive insight and industry conference reporting to explain market changes. His work links cargo metrics and trade policy to carrier strategy, and connects infrastructure and sustainability decisions to resilience, costs and long-term growth.
Adrienne Roberts
Adrienne Roberts is a business journalist at the Detroit Free Press who covers how policy, regulation and corporate decisions affect Michigan’s cannabis market, jobs, universities and health systems. She has a sustained focus on cannabis taxes, licensing, sales, product rules, consumer safety and local tax revenue. She also reports on unemployment, worker protections, corporate settlements, hiring, higher education, student safety, housing, data centers, health care access and economic forecasts. Roberts joined the Detroit Free Press in 2020 after covering automotive retail, dealers and labor issues for The Wall Street Journal. She explains complex business and regulatory changes with data, legal detail and on-the-ground voices. Her stories focus on practical effects for workers, students, consumers and communities, showing both the numbers and the people behind them.
Alex Bronzini-Vender
Alex Bronzini-Vender is a business reporter who focuses on how economic forces and corporate decisions shape specific communities and industries. He covers business for the Washington Monthly, writing reported pieces at the intersection of commerce and public life. His work reflects the magazine’s emphasis on linking markets and money to power, policy, and everyday experience. He treats business not as balance sheets and deals but as choices that affect local realities. In “Fear and Loathing in Palo Alto,” he uses a city tied to the tech sector to examine how a powerful industry influences a community. He grounds his business beat in on-the-ground consequences rather than treating corporate and financial developments in isolation.
Alex DeMarban
Alex DeMarban stands out for tracking major energy projects over time while showing how economic shifts affect local businesses. He reports for the Anchorage Daily News on business, oil and gas, and general assignments. His coverage focuses on Alaska LNG, long-haul energy projects, mining, ports, transportation infrastructure, and the everyday businesses that keep the state running. He examines financing, tax legislation, labor agreements, regulatory approvals, timelines and costs, and connects government and corporate decisions to workers, communities and consumers. He also reports on restaurant closures, grocery stores, breweries, meaderies, parking and trade disputes. His past coverage includes an open-pit mine near the proposed Ambler road, federal port grants and competitive elections. He reports through dollar figures, project details, public records, business owners and affected workers, showing how policy and resource development play out on the ground.