Hadley Hitson
Business coverage that links corporate decisions to everyday experience defines Hadley Hitson’s work at The Tennessean. She is a business reporter for the masthead, with a beat that spans trending business, health care and dining. Her stories track how growth, investment and workplace changes move from press releases into real effects for workers, customers and local communities. Earlier reporting on children’s health, education, welfare and community infrastructure problems continues to shape her attention to the human consequences of business news.
Tennessee’s largest companies and workplace change
Hitson covers major employers and leading brands through straightforward explanatory pieces on Tennessee’s corporate landscape. In her reporting on the state’s largest companies, she brings together familiar names from retail, logistics and other sectors to show who sits at the top of the market in a given year.
She also follows leadership moves at influential organizations, treating board appointments and executive roles as part of a wider story about business and civic power. Workplace coverage appears alongside this corporate focus, including reporting on Tennessee companies adopting measures such as four-day workweeks to attract and keep staff.
These stories keep the emphasis on how management decisions and workplace experiments affect employees’ day-to-day lives, not just headline numbers.
Hotels, restaurants and tourism developments
A large share of Hitson’s recent work centers on hospitality, dining and tourism projects, often at the moment they open, expand or change course.
She reports on hotel booms, documenting pipelines of new properties and planned brands and turning those development lists into clear pictures of how a city’s hospitality market is evolving. Her coverage of a newly opened Dolly Parton–themed hotel uses photo-forward storytelling to walk readers through key spaces, design choices and branded experiences inside the property.
Restaurant reporting is equally present, with pieces on celebrated East Nashville spots reopening after a fire and on high-profile concepts canceling planned local locations.
She also writes about distinctive attractions tied to sports and entertainment, such as features built around a team mascot’s interaction with a rescue animal, where the focus is on fan experience and brand personality. Real estate stories, including tours of historic homes listed for seven-figure prices, extend this hospitality lens into residential spaces, showing how architecture, design and pricing fit into a shifting local market.
Transportation, infrastructure and service reporting
Hitson’s business beat includes transportation and infrastructure stories that translate technical plans into clear narratives. She covers the expansion and contraction of air service, including lists of new flights added at the local airport and reports on airlines dropping previously announced routes.
Her earlier work has followed ambitious infrastructure proposals, such as a tunneling project by a high-profile technology company, breaking the process into step-by-step coverage that traces permitting, engineering questions and public reaction over time. She has also reported on environmental and utility failures, covering communities dealing with coal ash exposure and inadequate sewage systems, where business decisions intersect directly with public health and basic services.
Weather-advisory pieces tied to extreme heat and holiday weekends show the same service orientation, explaining risks and guidance from officials in terms that matter for residents, businesses and event planners.
Health, education and aging as business stories
Hitson brings a sustained interest in health, education and aging into her business reporting, treating these themes as integral to economic life rather than separate social issues.
Before joining The Tennessean’s business desk, she reported on children’s health, schooling and welfare and on conditions in rural communities, including stories about living near coal ash and lacking adequate sewage. She has contributed reporting to national work on student discipline and vague school rules, adding ground-level detail from her previous education coverage. Her fellowship work on aging and caregiving, and later pieces on how families manage the demands of later life, show a comfort with slow, narrative reporting on long-term challenges.
That experience feeds into current business stories on workforce trends and benefits, where she writes about employer efforts to recruit and retain staff with schedules, leave policies and supports that respond to caregiving and health needs. Across these subjects, she treats policy, corporate strategy and personal logistics as parts of the same story about how people live and work.
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.