The important changes of this year and the unprecedented uncertainty in federal governance are another memory of the importance of the Washington Magazine’s ARA High Court, DC, coverage. Tom Ichniowski, Washington Bureau Chief, has provided constant experience in his “INSIDE THE BELTWAY” reports for Enr and other publications, for more than four decades, have decided to withdraw.
Ichniwski ran the Federal Government reports for Enr, including the ups and downs of the 2024 election coverage.
At Columbia University School of Journalism, Ichniowski joined Business week Magazine in Philadelphia before moving to its prominent Bureau in Washington, where he also contributed to Enr, as both were owned by the old McGraw-Hill Cos.
Ichniwski later joined Enr as an office head and became a key chronicler of infrastructure funding, as well as key regulatory developments and politicians affecting the construction business. Ichniwski’s rational perspective on Ichniwski partisan storms was especially welcomed in the middle of accelerated news cycles enabled by digital tools, social networks as accepted news platform and more intense media competition.
Enr Washington’s coverage has been essential for the industry to “follow money,” says Ichniwski, with construction work and financial results in the industry so closely linked to the government support for federal, state and local projects. With many billions of dollars at stake, their understanding of political realities and the details of the legislation and the budget assured that ENR readers were affected at risks and results that affect the economy of industry, ideologies and key assets such as labor force.
“Tom spent a lot of time explaining -how the federal budget process works, how to compare the numbers and where to find them in mass documents,” says the office colleague, Pam McFarland, the main publisher of Policy and Environment.
An eye for complexities obtained Ichniwski’s respect and professional recognition, such as in the main analysis of the 2009 American recovery and reinvestment law, the “stimulus billm that won the prestigious Jesse H. Neal Business Journalism for News Coverage.
Its simple but powerful motivation: the bill “was a lifestyle for the construction industry,” he says.
James Leggate
In recent years, “Congress has become much more partisan,” says Ichniwski, which could make it difficult for Mammoth financing bills to be approved as the Law on Reduction of Infrastructure and Infrastructure of $ 1.7 million by 2021 and the Inflation Reduction Act of $ 380 million by 2022.
ENR’s federal coverage will remain in the hands, with McFarland now to which the online news publisher James Leggate as the new Government news publisher, according to the editor in no Scott Blair.
