By Pat Shaver
CORALVILLE — The Corridor Business Journal has selected a new editor.
Gigi Wood, who has reported on Johnson County for five years at the CBJ, was chosen as editor last week.
Her first goal on the job is to find a new reporter, she said. She also plans to encourage different ways to tell stories with information, graphics and photos. Ms. Wood is looking to expand the CBJ’s coverage and explore businesses and topics that haven’t been covered before. The goal, she said, is to make the CBJ more readable and accessible.
“As manager of the newsroom I’m expected to help everyone do a better job and always push for something better,” she said.
The position opened up when John Kenyon, who was editor since the CBJ started publishing eight years ago, announced in May that he took a job as the interim executive director of the Iowa City UNESCO City of Literature. Ms. Wood has been interim editor since Mr. Kenyon’s departure.
Around that time, she celebrated her fifth year with the CBJ. She said the milestone got her thinking about what was next for her in her career.
“What I like to do is write and I’ll still get to do that,” she said. “And it’s fun to work for an independently-owned paper, you can tweak things and try new things.”
Ms. Wood will oversee the CBJ’s website and daily e-mails, the weekly print paper, the CBJ quarterly magazine, the annual Book of Lists and other special print supplements.
“The goal is to continue to improve and create a paper that serves the need of the business community,” she said.
“The values—the ethics and integrity will remain the same,” she said. “We will continue to write really high-quality business stories in the Corridor.”
Ms. Wood, who grew up in Des Moines, has degrees in English, psychology and journalism from the University of Iowa. She was named the 2008 Iowa Small Business Journalist of the Year by the U.S. Small Business Administration. She was also recognized with gold and bronze awards by the Alliance of Area Business Publications in 2009 for coverage of the 2008 eastern Iowa flooding.
A reporter for 14 years, she has worked for several Iowa newspapers and services, including the Iowa City Press Citizen, the Gazette and the Associated Press, among others. She has experience operating a small business in Coralville, Critical Hit Games, from 2005 to 2008.
Ms. Wood wrote “Iowa life | changing,” a 28-chapter promotional tool for the Iowa Department of Economic Development distributed to persuade businesses and workers to come to Iowa.
The Corridor Business Journal, a locally-owned media company, is owned by John and Aspen Lohman.
