“There are a lot of good reporters that cover aviation, but they are fewer than ever,” said Jon Ostrower, who has covered the industry for CNN and The Wall Street Journal and is now editor-in-chief of The Air Current, a subscription-based aviation news service.
Washington crash shows how the aviation beat is fading Summoned from his couch to cover last week's plane disaster in Washington, CNN's Pete Muntean rushed in for the first of 24 live reports over the next 48 hours.
“I realized that planes weren't crashing and I needed a new beat,” said Bill Adair, a former reporter who wrote a book, “The Mystery of Flight 427: Inside a Crash Investigation,” about a 1994 plane crash in western Pennsylvania that killed 132 people.
With safety a major component of the aviation beat, the fact that the last major U.S. commercial air crash before last week came in 2009 means there is less to do.
The New York Times splits things up: Niraj Chokshi covers aviation and transportation, Mark Walker follows the National Transporation Safety Board and Christine Chung follows the airline industry from a consumer perspective.
