The bylines of veteran reporters Chris Poynter and Kay Stewart will be gone from the Courier-Journal in 2007.

Both are leaving journalism to work in P.R. Poynter will join city government as the Mayor’s spokesman for all things economic. Poynter is part of a group developing dowtown properties, including Gallery Square Lofts, a $4 million project announced earlier this year at Clay and Jefferson streets. Poynter told me he got a call from Chad Carlton, the Mayor’s communications director, who offered him the job over lunch. Poynter spent nearly a decade at the C-J, and was among the paper’s staffers embracing the new technology push. He recently traveled to Russell Springs to report on the city’s reaction to the Miss USA/Donald Trump controversy.

Stewart, who covered last fall’s 3rd District Congressional race, is joining a Frankfort-based government-relations agency involved heavily in the Bridges project. She’s finishing her second stint at the C-J. She spent 19 years there before leaving for Doe-Anderson, where she worked for six years. In 2004, she came back to the C-J.

Both said that the changes going down at Sixth and Broadway had nothing to do with their departures. Their last day is Dec. 29.