Nick Lichtenberg
Nick Lichtenberg covers how large business bets in technology collide with the physical and political limits of building the infrastructure they depend on. At Fortune, he reports on business stories where Big Tech’s long-range investment plans meet local land use, energy constraints, and community resistance.
Big Tech infrastructure and community pushback
Lichtenberg’s coverage examines the friction between trillion-dollar technology ambitions and the towns and cities asked to host the hardware behind them. In his reporting on data centers, he follows how communities are blocking large new facilities even as major tech companies commit extraordinary sums to expand them, treating zoning battles, public meetings, and local organizing as core business storylines rather than side notes. He shows how residents, local officials, and developers negotiate over tax breaks, noise, water use, and power demand, framing these disputes as a material risk to corporate strategies rather than a purely political or cultural clash.
Explaining the stakes in data center expansion
His work on data centers focuses on connecting eye-popping investment figures to the practical conditions that determine whether those projects are built. Lichtenberg writes about Big Tech’s roughly $1 trillion wager on cloud and AI infrastructure through the lens of siting decisions, grid capacity, and permitting timelines, making clear how delays or cancellations in specific projects can ripple through earnings, growth forecasts, and competitive positioning. He highlights the scale of capital committed to these facilities while spelling out the concrete reasons projects stall, from strained power systems to organized neighborhood opposition.
Long-form business reporting on physical infrastructure
Lichtenberg’s reporting style leans on long-form narratives that walk readers through the life cycle of a project, from corporate announcement to local resistance. In his data center coverage, he threads together company plans, community responses, and infrastructure realities, using specific projects as case studies for broader trends in the business of technology.
He brings a structural lens to business news, focusing not only on what companies intend to build but on the land, power, and public consent required to make those plans real.
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.