Why business coverage is so prominent in the Peoria Journal Star

I love to see our front page with stories about local people investing in the community.

Local businesses give a city character.

When a new place arrives on the scene, you never know if it's something big or a flash in the pan.

At the Journal Star, we don't try to make that determination, so we regularly write about business openings. Oftentimes, those businesses are restaurants or part of the food industry.

We want to inform the community about new places and established ones. In the case of Sugar Wood-Fired Bistro, we've done both. We wrote about its opening in 2013 and its 10-year anniversary this month. Sugar is a well-documented success story of both a local restaurant and the development of the Warehouse District.

We've also written about Sous Chef on multiple occasions. The small grocery store has been in the Warehouse District for five years.

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Nationally, so many food establishments go out of business within a year, and even fewer last five years.

Inevitably, restaurants go out of business around here, too. When we report on those closings, it's unfortunate to see someone on social media say something like: "I've never even heard of this place."

Sometimes I think: "We've written about it multiple times, published in the newspaper and on our social media."

To help readers keep up with the news, Journal Star reporter Cassidy Waigand publishes a newsletter on the local food and dining scene, delivered to your email every Thursday. The newsletter is a collection of stories about new restaurants, closing businesses, anniversaries, menu updates, the people behind local businesses and more.

It's impossible for us to write about every business in Peoria and unimaginable when you add in surrounding towns and counties. But business coverage, whether it's food or not, is one of our core topics.

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If you think there's some place we've overlooked, feel free to let us know. We'll add it to our long list of story ideas. And hopefully it's another success story — in the present and future.

Romando Dixson is the executive editor of the Journal Star. Contact him at rdixson@gannett.com. Check out our staff page to connect with other local journalists at the Journal Star.