PHOENIX — Since it’s spring break for the students at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, the campus should have been empty.  But just under 300 business writers, editors, and others in the field have flocked to the  Phoenix, Ariz. campus for the Society of American Business Editors and Writers annual conference.

“Business journalism is heating up, rather than cooling down,” said Mark Scarp, membership coordinator at SABEW.

And he was not talking about southwest’s notorious dry heat.  Journalism and business are both in the midst of seminal — and most would say painful –revolutions. No one understands that better than the conference attendees.

“We all have smaller staffs than we used to and yet the economic crisis is even more important,” said Megan Schnabel, editor at the Blue Ridge Business Journal.  Everyone needs to do more with less, she said.

But the conference line-up will not focus on the dire state of the industry, according to Scarp and Warren Watson, Executive Director of SABEW.  Instead, everything oriented around skills and the news itself.

“People rely now on business journalists,” Scarp said, in the aftermath of the crisis.  “Business journalists need to have as many resources as they possibly can.  Now more than ever.”

Organizations like the Associated Press, Google, and the Reynolds Center came to build support for their products and to give tutorials to conference-goers.  For those exhibitors, the $1700 booth fee was well worth it, according to Alexandra Stein of the Greater Phoenix Economic Council.

The annual conference boasts big-name speakers like Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., chairman and publisher of The New York Times; “pay czar” Kenneth Feinberg; and Leonard Downie Jr., who helped The Washington Post win 25 Pulitzer Prizes during his tenure as executive editor.  It is the largest ever at Arizona State’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication’s new campus.  SABEW officials estimate the numbers of paid attendees, exhibitors, speakers, and others will be between 275 and 300.

The big names and skill-gathering alone did not bring journalists like Schnabel.

“A big part of it is networking, getting to know other business journalists facing the same challenges,” she said.

But it’s not all bad, according to Schnabel.

“We’re being forced to decide which coverage is most important to our readers.”  And that means being more deliberate in their choices. Prioritizing is not a bad thing, according to Schnabel.

On the sunny Friday in Phoenix, many shared that optimism.  Scarp was laid off from his job as a general news reporter for the East Valley Tribune in Mesa, Ariz.  Now, he works for SABEW and teaches journalism ethics as ASU.

“I’m grateful to still be in journalism,” he said.