USA TODAY Network strengthens Ohio Statehouse coverage with merged reporting teams

With the combined resources of The Columbus Dispatch and The Cincinnati Enquirer, we are launching the USA TODAY Network Ohio Bureau to cover matters of state government and politics that most affect you in your daily life.

This merger of the Enquirer Columbus Bureau team and the Dispatch Public Affairs team will be led by veteran Statehouse reporter Jackie Borchardt, who has been the Columbus Bureau Chief for the Enquirer since 2018.

Borchardt, 35, has covered Ohio government and politics since early 2012. Before coming to the Enquirer, she was a Columbus bureau reporter for Cleveland.com. She has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Rochester and a master’s degree from the Missouri School of Journalism. Before working for Cleveland.com, Borchardt was a Columbus correspondent for the Dayton Daily News.

While at Cleveland.com, she helped build an audience for Capitol coverage in northeastern Ohio, statewide and nationally. And working with reporter Jessie Balmert in the Enquirer bureau, she has done even more of that for the USA TODAY Network.

That network is now 260 daily newspapers across the U.S., including 21 in Ohio, stretching from Akron in northeastern Ohio through Columbus to Cincinnati.

The USA TODAY Network Ohio Bureau will be based in The Dispatch offices, where we can literally look across E. Broad Street and see the Statehouse. In fact, the Enquirer leased an office in the Dispatch building for its Columbus bureau for several years before the news organizations were joined together under Gannett ownership.

So Borchardt and Balmert were well acquainted with the Dispatch Public Affairs team of Darrel Rowland, Randy Ludlow, Marc Kovac, Anna Staver and Rick Rouan. And they have been coordinating coverage since the Dispatch became part of the USA TODAY Network a year ago.

Now, the collaboration moves to a new level as a unified team, which will focus on enterprise and watchdog coverage of the legislature, state government and politics, and also work with urgency to bring you breaking news on Dispatch.com, Cincinnati.com and the other Ohio sites as it happens. They will explain how that news will affect you, your family and your pocketbook.

They also will work with reporters at the Akron Beacon Journal, The Repository in Canton and others across the Ohio and national network to leverage our collective expertise and bring important stories home to you – explaining how the decisions and actions of state officials affect you. They also will pursue other stories of statewide interest, especially watchdog stories and investigations.

With this change, Rowland will move to a senior editor position at The Dispatch. While he will remain connected to the Ohio Bureau team, the veteran investigative reporter and editor will focus on enterprise reporting, such as the ongoing investigation into prescription-drug pricing that he has led for more than two years.

That type of reporting has been a hallmark for the members of the Ohio Bureau, who routinely break news because of the strength of their networking and reporting skills. Many of them have been involved in ongoing coverage of the coronavirus, and several of them (or at least their voices) have become well known to Ohioans who tune in for Gov. Mike DeWine’s briefings.

Alan D. Miller is regional editor for the USA TODAY Network Ohio and editor of The Dispatch.

amiller@dispatch.com

@dispatcheditor