Kelly Tyko
Kelly Tyko explains how major retailers compete for cost-conscious shoppers, covering the business of big-box chains, discounters and national brands for Axios. She focuses on how pricing, promotions and merchandising strategy show up in store traffic, sales and profits, with a consistent emphasis on what those moves mean for everyday shoppers. Her coverage sits at the intersection of corporate results and the real-world retail experience.
Retail earnings and turnaround strategies
Tyko follows quarterly results at major chains and translates earnings language into clear takeaways about how retailers are performing. Her reporting on companies such as Target tracks how leadership teams try to revive sales through style-driven assortments, store remodels, supply-chain fixes and renewed focus on key categories. She highlights comparable sales, traffic trends and profit pressures, but always ties those numbers back to concrete changes shoppers see on shelves and in store layouts.
She often frames earnings stories around the question of whether a specific strategy is “working” with customers, using recent quarters to show momentum or setbacks. Executive commentary is balanced with analyst insight and outside data, so readers understand both what companies say and how the market assesses those claims. Across these pieces, she keeps jargon to a minimum and explains business concepts through vivid examples from major retailers’ day-to-day operations.
Big-box, dollar stores and shifting store fleets
Tyko’s beat extends across the full spectrum of mass retail, from warehouse clubs and supercenters to dollar stores and off-price chains. She regularly covers which banners are opening new locations, experimenting with smaller formats or closing underperforming stores, and she spells out what those moves mean for local shoppers. Store map changes are treated as business decisions driven by costs, crime, shifting demand and e-commerce competition, not just as lists of openings and closures.
Her stories on store fleets often zoom in on specific chains and categories, such as club stores expanding pickup lanes, discount retailers pushing deeper into groceries or pharmacy chains trimming locations. She explains how retailers use remodels, new layouts and in-store services to keep foot traffic strong, and she points out when those experiments succeed or stall. The through-line is how physical retail is being reshaped market by market, and which formats are winning the fight for convenience and value.
Deals, loyalty programs and the calendar of sales
Tyko is a consistent guide to the national deals cycle, covering holiday shopping, back-to-school promotions, Prime Day and other tentpole sales events. She breaks down which retailers are discounting which categories, what the fine print looks like, and how long promotions last. Her deal coverage is service-focused, but she places each round of markdowns in the context of broader pricing and inventory strategies.
She also tracks loyalty programs and memberships at big chains, explaining new perks, point structures, fuel rewards and price-match guarantees. When retailers tweak benefits, raise fees or add exclusive discounts, she spells out the changes in plain language and notes how they compare with rival programs. Readers come away with both the practical details needed to use an offer and a clear sense of how retailers are using deals and loyalty to retain shoppers in a crowded market.
Consumer behavior in an inflation-conscious era
Across her business coverage, Tyko returns to how economic conditions change the way people shop. She reports on the trade-offs shoppers make in response to higher prices, from switching to private labels and bulk purchases to chasing limited-time promotions. Her stories highlight how trends like shrinkflation, buy now, pay later options and curbside pickup alter the balance between price, convenience and brand loyalty.
She relies on a mix of corporate commentary, industry data and on-the-ground examples to show how behavior is moving, rather than treating consumers as an abstract statistic. Whether she is writing about a retailer’s strong quarter or a major sales event, she consistently anchors the story in how households are adjusting their routines, and which retailers are best aligned with those new habits.
4 more business journalists.
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 Smith
Alex Smith focuses on the business impact of enterprise technology, with a distinctive emphasis on AI literacy and skills rather than technical specifications. They write for Technology Record, covering how artificial intelligence and cloud platforms from major providers are turned into concrete programmes for organisations and governments. Their beat sits at the junction of business strategy, national digital policy and large-scale technology partnerships. They report on national AI literacy programmes and public–private partnerships, showing how policy choices, vendor capabilities and skills gaps intersect. On the business beat, they treat AI and cloud as tools for competitiveness, workforce readiness and participation in a data-driven economy. Their concise, announcement-led reporting highlights who is partnering with whom, what programme is being launched, which technologies underpin it and how it changes capability on the ground for executive readers.
Alison Durkee
Alison Durkee focuses on how law, regulation and politics create business risks for major companies and industries. She is a reporter at Forbes, where she writes news-driven explainers on complex legal and regulatory developments and their impact on corporate strategy, reputation and markets. Her coverage centers on companies under scrutiny, especially in technology and other high-growth sectors, and tracks trials, investigations and fast-changing policy fights. She breaks down lawsuits, inquiries and regulatory moves into clear parts, grounded in timelines, filings and official actions. She reports on generative artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies as tests of legal frameworks and corporate risk management, explaining how issues like intellectual property, safety compliance, consumer protection and governance can reshape product roadmaps, partnerships and investor expectations.
Alyson Shontell
Alyson Shontell covers business through the lens of leadership, using in-depth conversations with powerful executives and founders to show how their decisions shape companies, markets, and public life. She is editor in chief at Fortune, overseeing coverage across the masthead while continuing to write selected high-impact pieces. Her core work is long, reported interviews and profiles of CEOs of large companies, dominant tech firms, and fast-growing startups. She focuses on how leaders think, manage risk, make unconventional calls, and handle crises, culture, and the future of work. Her subjects include corporate chiefs, startup founders, and political figures treated as executives. She probes operating detail, governance, internal culture, and trade-offs around growth, disruption, and workplace models, using concrete examples and direct, accessible prose that foregrounds the subject’s voice while pressing for specifics.