Breeanna Jent
Breeanna Jent tracks how development, retail change and economic pressures shape everyday business life as a business reporter for the Colorado Springs Gazette. Her beat centers on business news in Colorado Springs and El Paso County, with a focus on commercial openings and closures, real estate projects and the regional economy. Her coverage pairs detailed reporting on projects and companies with clear explanations of the policy, cost-of-living and labor dynamics behind them. She previously covered local governments and worked as an editorial assistant for Pikes Peak Newspapers before joining The Gazette in 2020, giving her business reporting a grounding in municipal decision-making and community context.
Business openings, closures and retail shifts
Jent’s day-to-day reporting follows the local business landscape closely, documenting how individual companies expand, relocate or shut their doors and what that means for workers and customers. She has covered the closure of all Jack in the Box locations in the greater Colorado Springs area, explaining which sites were affected and placing the change within the region’s fast-food and quick-service market. Her stories on Walgreens shutting additional Colorado Springs stores and on a nearly century-old shop closing detail timelines, locations and the reasons given, while preserving the history and community ties of long-running businesses.
On the growth side, she reports on Crunch Fitness moving into a larger space, describing the new site, investment in the facility and how the relocation fits into broader fitness and retail trends. She profiles new entrants such as Angelo’s Taverna and Carboy Winery, The Sportsbook Bar & Grill and a combined game store and ice cream shop, highlighting ownership, concept, site selection and the role these ventures play in emerging entertainment and dining corridors. Her coverage of Small Business Week and associated awards surfaces local entrepreneurs and firms, noting who is recognized and what the event reveals about the health of the small business ecosystem.
Across these pieces she keeps the emphasis on concrete business decisions, customer impact and the texture of commercial streets rather than on personality-driven storytelling.
Real estate, housing and downtown development
Real estate and development are a second major pillar of Jent’s work, where she follows projects from early approvals through construction and leasing and connects them to housing and investment debates. In her reporting on the planned 27-story apartment tower downtown, she lays out the project’s scale, cost, approval history and delays, showing how a marquee development fits into a push for greater residential density and skyline-defining construction.
She has covered Weidner Apartment Homes’ second phase at the Experience at Epicenter complex, explaining how additional apartments and retail space will be integrated near existing sports and entertainment venues. Her piece on the city council’s approval of a new guiding document for downtown outlines the framework that will drive future development and public and private investment over the next decade, linking policy language to practical consequences for projects and property owners. In statewide coverage for Colorado Politics, she writes about housing mismatch and purchasing power in Colorado Springs, historic high home prices in the Pikes Peak region and a broader real estate outlook that breaks the market into key areas with differing fortunes. She also examines modular housing expansion and factory investment, detailing how a new facility backed by state incentives will supply single- and multi-family units and create jobs, tying industrial development to housing supply.
These stories share a consistent approach: they situate individual projects within larger questions of affordability, growth management and how built environments evolve under economic and policy pressures.
Regional economy, jobs and cost of living
Jent regularly steps back from single projects to map the regional economy, tracking jobs, business sentiment and the cost of living through data, expert commentary and case studies.
Her reporting on Colorado’s cost of living ranking, which places the state among the most expensive in the country, combines statewide metrics with resident experiences to show how higher prices translate into strain on households and employers. She has written about the retail market in the Colorado Springs area remaining strong yet challenged, using inflation, tariffs and global conflict as a backdrop for examining how shoppers change their behavior and how retailers adapt. In coverage of a newly formed political action committee focused on southern Colorado businesses, she explores how companies seek a stronger voice in policy debates and frames the group’s priorities within broader economic concerns.
She reports on aerospace and defense firms expanding operations and pledging to add hundreds of jobs, spelling out the number of positions, timelines and implications for the local labor market and industry mix. Her pieces on the UCCS Economic Forum and on the City of Pueblo ending its contract with an economic development corporation show her interest in how institutional decisions and economic analyses filter down to business owners and workers.
She also covers topics at the edge of business and health, such as AI in the exam room, where she looks at the intersection of technology, care delivery and human expertise. Across outlets, including Colorado Politics and the Denver Gazette, she presents economic issues in clear, accessible language that ties statistical trends to everyday realities.
Government, community coverage and editorial voice
Before focusing on business, Jent reported on local governments, which now informs the way she covers regulations, council actions and public processes that shape business conditions. Her earlier work includes community news such as pets-of-the-week features, crime reports, community briefs and the Tri-Lakes Business Buzz column, blending public information with snapshots of the local economic and civic scene. She has taken on editorial roles for community newspapers within The Gazette’s family, contributing “From the Editor” columns that discuss reading culture, wildfire preparedness and personal lessons at the turn of the year, showing comfort in adopting a reflective voice when the format calls for it. That experience with community-focused and editorial writing reinforces the clarity and straightforward tone of her business coverage, keeping her stories grounded in how policies and market shifts touch individual neighborhoods, readers and institutions.
4 more business journalists.
Aarjavee Raaj
Aarjavee Raaj focuses on how corporate decisions, government warnings and economic trends affect everyday Canadians, using clear, data-driven business and related news coverage. She is a CTVNews.ca journalist with experience reporting on arts, culture, business and more, and her name is pronounced Aar-Za-Vee. Her work links institutional and corporate developments to practical consequences for workers, consumers and families, including corporate losses, retail restructuring, tax schemes and compliance warnings. She reports on workplace trends, economic strain, consumer recalls and health impacts, using survey data, charity reports, regulatory notices and clinical stories to show how macroeconomic and policy issues touch daily life. A digital journalist, she keeps to tight headlines, clear summaries of official statements or data, and a steady focus on what developments mean for people who work, shop and rely on public services.
Abigail Adams
Abigail Adams reports human interest stories that follow how sudden conflict, loss and long-running mysteries reshape the lives of ordinary people in everyday settings. She is a writer-reporter on PEOPLE’s Human Interest team, a role she has held since joining the brand in June 2021. Her work centers on routine days that turn into major events, giving equal weight to what happened and the human cost. She covers minor disputes and errands that end in tragedy, sudden accidents, law enforcement and public safety incidents, and missing-person cases with new developments after years of uncertainty. Her reporting is concise, event-led and built around individual lives, often framed with clear emotional cues while staying grounded in verified facts. Business and workplace contexts appear as backdrops, but the person and their circle remain at the heart of the story.
Akshay Kulkarni
Akshay Kulkarni is a data-led reporter who explains how economic, policy and social forces play out in British Columbia through concrete numbers, records and local case histories. He has worked as a journalist at CBC British Columbia since 2021, focusing on business, labour and resource developments, including tariffs, trade rules, corporate strategies and regulatory decisions. His coverage of critical minerals, Amazon’s impact on jobs and wages, and responsible investment links market shifts to the lived experience of workers, consumers and small businesses. He also reports on infrastructure, energy and land use, such as the Site C project and high-value property disputes, and on policy and social systems, including Indigenous deaths in custody, social media use in harm reduction, and mandatory inquests. His stories are built around original interviews and quantitative detail that show how systems affect communities on the ground.
Alex Karpa
Alex Karpa is a journalist with CTV National News who connects policies, innovations and systems to their effects on people’s lives. His real beat spans health care, research, reconciliation, culture, infrastructure and the regional economy. He reports on treatment access, medical breakthroughs, cancer care, emergency-room failures and health-system accountability. He covers residential school survivors, Indigenous artifact repatriation and the legacy of Louis Riel. His business and economy stories examine the Port of Churchill, sustainable farming technology, small-business theft and the Canada Strong Pass. He also reports on music, climate change, forest fires and honeybee populations. Across television segments and digital stories, he relies on detailed interviews, on-the-ground reporting and specific cases. He uses patients, families, survivors, researchers, businesses and communities to explain wider structural issues and practical consequences.