Meredith Klein of Meredith & the Media spoke with Malique Morris, senior e-commerce correspondent at The Business of Fashion, about his job.
Here is an excerpt:
You’ve been in journalism for about a decade. You worked at Man of the Hour magazine, Crain’s Detroit Business, The Information, and now The Business of Fashion. What are some of the stories you’re most proud of, and why?
- A friend of mine sent me a posting for an internship at Man of the Hour magazine, which was a men’s lifestyle magazine site geared toward men of color.
- I wrote specifically about fashion, and I got free rein to focus on the kind of retail, brands, and trends I thought were really interesting. Every week, I would write about how to get a certain look for less.
- In terms of stories I’m most proud of, I love doing deep dives on companies and getting scoops, which is in some ways a mandate in journalism to make a name for yourself. Getting exclusives show that you’re deeply embedded in your area of coverage from a source perspective.
- When I was at The Information, I wrote about The RealReal, and that was a pretty full-circle moment for me because when I was in grad school, I had a class called “Covering Companies,” and I covered The RealReal. I learned how to read an earnings report, listen to an earnings call, talk to analysts—all the mechanics of doing business journalism I learned in that class.
- My final story at The Information in 2022 was a big story about The RealReal, a luxury resale site that was a pioneer in secondhand selling. It hadn’t been profitable, the CEO left, and the chief financial officer had left shortly before that. I was able to go deep and talk to a lot of people in the C-suite and people throughout the business about what really prevented it from becoming a profitable company, as well as dig into its strategies and what led to the ouster of the CFO by the CEO.
- More recently, I’ve been doing a lot of coverage going deep on companies on my beat, including Coupang’s acquisition of Farfetch. We were the ones who broke the news about Farfetch’s bankruptcy. I did a story earlier this year about the tension between the old guard and the new guard, Coupang.
Read more here.
