Tess Martinelli
Tess Martinelli covers business for Business Insider through the experiences of individual workers living through economic upheaval. Her work connects corporate events to the day‑to‑day reality of the people they displace, keeping the focus on how job losses, industry shifts, and uncertainty feel from the ground. She writes in clear, direct language that foregrounds a subject’s own voice and the choices they face after a sudden change at work.
Worker stories in times of corporate upheaval
Martinelli’s business coverage is driven by worker narratives rather than balance sheets. In her piece on a former flight attendant who lost her job when Spirit shut down, she builds the story around a single employee’s experience of an abrupt end to a flying career. The story follows what that shutdown means in human terms: a lost job, a disrupted routine, and a forced rethinking of what work can look like next.
By anchoring a major airline’s closure in one person’s story, she turns an abstract business development into something concrete and relatable.
Emotional and practical fallout of job loss
Her reporting treats job loss as both an economic and emotional event.
In the Spirit flight attendant story, she highlights how the subject manages their emotions after being laid off, not just how they update a résumé or apply for openings. The narrative explores hope, anxiety, and identity alongside financial concerns, showing how layoffs reshape a person’s sense of self as well as their budget.
That emphasis on inner life gives her business reporting a tone closer to a reported memoir than a transactional career guide.
Narrative business features built around personal turning points
Martinelli favors a feature style that moves through a subject’s life at a turning point, rather than breaking news briefs. The Spirit shutdown story unfolds as a before‑and‑after: the routines and appeal of flight attendant work, the moment everything changes, and the effort to chart a new path in an uncertain job market. She uses first‑person framing to keep the subject’s perspective central, allowing them to explain what they miss, what they regret, and what they hope to build next.
The result is business journalism that treats layoffs and industry volatility as pivotal chapters in a person’s working life, not just numbers in a labor report.
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.