Nico Portuondo
Nico Portuondo covers the business side of energy for E&E News, concentrating on how major power users, utilities and policymakers negotiate the costs and risks of the energy transition. His coverage sits at the point where fast-growing industries like data centers collide with electricity markets, infrastructure limits and consumer protection. He writes with a focus on who pays, who benefits and how legislative and regulatory decisions reshape the economics of the grid.
Data centers, grid strain and consumer costs
Portuondo’s work on the political fight over data center growth and a proposed ratepayer protection bill shows how he uses individual bills to explain larger market pressures. He traces how surging electricity demand from computing infrastructure feeds into utility planning, new generation and transmission projects, and ultimately household and business power bills. In this coverage he treats data centers not just as a technology story but as a capital-intensive power customer whose contracts, incentives and siting choices have wide consequences for other users of the grid. He pays close attention to the safeguards lawmakers design to prevent large industrial loads from shifting risk onto everyday ratepayers.
Where utilities, large power users and policy meet
Within the business beat, Portuondo focuses on the relationships among utilities, regulators and large energy users. He examines how corporate electricity buyers, including data center operators, interact with utility investment plans and cost-recovery structures. His reporting highlights the negotiations around who carries the financial exposure for new plants and lines built to serve big loads, and how that exposure is divided between shareholders and customers. By grounding these stories in specific proposals and contracts, he shows how abstract debates over “reliability” and “affordability” translate into concrete decisions on infrastructure build-out and rate design.
Translating legislation into market impacts
Portuondo consistently treats bills and regulatory initiatives as business events as much as political ones. He follows how proposed protections for ratepayers, new requirements on utilities or incentives for large power users would alter cash flows, risk profiles and investment timelines across the sector. His pieces spell out which companies, industries and customer groups stand to gain or lose under different policy paths, and how those expectations drive lobbying, coalition-building and public arguments around energy projects. Throughout, he maintains a clear, factual style that keeps the focus on the mechanics of policy and markets rather than rhetoric, giving his coverage particular value to readers who need to understand the financial stakes of energy decisions.
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.