Dawn Peake, Business Editor of the St. Cloud Times, has been named the Minnesota Small Business Journalist of the Year by the U.S. Small Business Administration.
The Small Business Journalist of the Year is selected annually to honor journalists representing television, radio, electronic or print media who show a concerted effort to increase public understanding of the importance of small business contributions to the economy, contribute news and feature stories, editorials, columns and commentary that highlight and analyze small business issues, volunteer community service aimed at enhancing small business opportunity and growth, and other achievements that exemplify the nominee’s media efforts to improve the understanding of the role of small business in the U.S. economy.
Peake joined the St. Cloud Times in October 2004 as a non-profit and religion reporter before accepting a business reporter position in December and helping launch the company’s quarterly business magazine, ROI Central Minnesota. She became business editor of the St. Cloud Times an ROI in November 2005.
As a business editor at the St. Cloud Times, Dawn Peake guides two reporters and one intern while producing stories herself. The team writes about business and economics for the daily edition of the newspaper and its Business page, for the Times Website (www.StCloudTimes.com) and for ROI Central Minnesota quarterly business magazine.
Peake and her staff track trends and individual business indicators in Central Minnesota and regularly report that information to the community in both publications.
Peake’s articles show the breadth and depth of local small-business operations. She has written about the family-owned trucking businesses, the construction and real estate industries, inventors, retail, manufacturing, banking, business recognition and more. She writes and/or edits a twice-a-week column on new, expanding or moving businesses, most of which are small businesses. She writes regularly about broad economic shifts and their effect on local businesses.
As editor, Peake has focused on not only increasing the newspaper’s coverage of local businesses, but also educating business leaders on the media and articulating their messages through one-on-one and small group meetings as well as large group speaking engagements.