The Orange County Business Journal has added a pair of reporters to its growing staff, Kari Hamanaka and Jessie Yount.
Hamanaka will cover consumer-facing industries for the paper, with a focus on the area’s collection of apparel, fashion, beauty, automotive, restaurant and marketing companies, as well as the area’s top shopping centers.
Yount heads coverage of the area’s vibrant startup and innovation scene, and will also cover higher education news at the Business Journal, the paper of record for Orange County’s business community.
“We’re extremely excited to have reporters the caliber of Kari and Jessie join our paper’s editorial team, as we continue to expand and improve our coverage across all areas of the local economy,” said Business Journal Editor Mark Mueller.
“As print media cuts back on investment in journalism, the Business Journal’s editorial staff is now the best it’s ever been,” said Publisher Richard Reisman. “While it is a sad time for print journalism, we are fortunate that we are consistently raising the bar.”
Retail, Startups
It’s a return home for Hamanaka, an OC native, Costa Mesa resident, and California State University-Fullerton grad. She previously worked for the Business Journal from 2012 to 2014.
She had been serving as the West Coast Retail and Tech Editor for Women’s Wear Daily in Los Angeles prior to her return to OC last month.
In addition to writing features and heading special sections such as October’s upcoming Automotive Review Special Report, Hamanaka writes the paper’s Marketing & Retail column (see page 12).
She can be reached at hamanaka@ocbj.com.
In her spare time, Hamanaka, an underground music fan and a photographer, serves as Associate Editor for Razorcake, a nonprofit music magazine based out of L.A.
Yount comes to the Business Journal after serving as a writer for the University of California-Irvine’s Paul Merage School of Business’ internal online and print publications. The UCI grad counts stories on Anduril Industries’ Palmer Luckey and Axonics Modulation Technologies Inc. among her recent work there.
The Literary Journalism degree holder has also written features for Sauté Magazine and TravelAge West.
The Tustin resident will be spearheading the paper’s Startups & Innovations page, a weekly column that details OC’s growing base of emerging, next-generation technology, medical device, and other early-stage businesses (see page 14), in addition to her other duties.
She can be reached at yount@ocbj.com.
When not writing, Yount can be seen scaling walls and teaching other rock climbers at Santa Ana’s Sender One Climbing (see separate story, page 35).
