The Chronicle recently announced the selection of an editor for the business section:
Laura Goldberg has been named business editor of the Houston Chronicle, editor Jeff Cohen has announced.
She has been interim business editor since last summer.
“Laura already is a forceful advocate for expanding and improving the section’s reach and for owning the franchise on important local beats from energy to health care to Latin America,” Cohen said in making the announcement.
In eight years at the Chronicle, Goldberg covered airlines and energy as a reporter.
As if on cue, the business section ran a story by the D.C. bureau’s Dirk Vanderhart a few days later on a newly released report on airline service. The story contained useful information such as:
While customer satisfaction declined a bit last year at Continental Airlines, the Houston carrier improved its rank among the nation’s top airlines, according to a report on airline service released Monday.
[snip]
“Measured against our network airline peers, 2005 was an outstanding year for Continental, where we ranked first or second in all of the key U.S. Department of Transportation performance categories,” the company said in a prepared statement.
[snip]
In its statement, Continental acknowledged that flying so many planes with so few empty seats is a challenge.
“We’re flying with record load factors,” the company said.”While that poses significant operational challenges, we feel we are doing an excellent job in meeting the expectations of our more than 60 million annual customers.”
So if the Chronicle is really serious about “owning the franchise on important local beats,” wouldn’t it have been a good idea to interview an actual living, breathing person at Continental, the Houston-based carrier, instead of quoting from a prepared statement — and perhaps to follow up with someone in the Houston Airport System? Wouldn’t one even expect it, given the new section editor’s experience in covering airlines?
