PR is like customer service — it’s in your interest to do it right
It’s a ritual I witness at least once every week as I go about lining up guests for the various radio programs that I produce, including “Business Unconventional,” “Monday Morning Radio” and “Radio Chavura.” A company or organization issues a national news release, hoping to draw attention to itself. The release may be designed primarily […]
The power of “after,” a common communications blindspot
The news media are so ephemeral. I know firsthand, having produced and co-hosted a fresh one-hour radio business newsmagazine each week for the past year plus. My show, “Business Unconventional,” is broadcast Sunday mornings on 710 KNUS AM in Denver. KNUS, a Salem Communications station, employs a news/talk format that attracts Colorado’s largest audience of […]
Lesonsky took an Entrepreneurial-like gamble on covering small businesses
The small business beat was quite tiny when Rieva Lesonsky first began researching it professionally in 1978. Like so many women who came after her – both in journalism and in business – the odds of her succeeding on such an untested employment path weren’t great. Yet Lesonsky, during a career at Entrepreneur magazine that […]
Dow Jones Newswires’ Lipschutz stair-stepped his way to the top
It is a bit ironic that unlike his counterparts at rivals Thomson Reuters and Bloomberg News, the managing editor of Dow Jones Newswires never worked as a regular reporter or editor at The Wall Street Journal. Neal S. Lipschutz, who since January 2007 has overseen all of the editorial operations of the burgeoning Dow Jones […]
Barron’s Abelson is one for the record books
If there were a definitive business journalism Book of Records, Alan Abelson would no doubt dominate some major categories: Longest current tenure as a columnist at a single business/financial news outlet; Sued or the subject of threatened lawsuits by the most number of story subjects; Subject of the largest number of letters to the editor […]
Ten Twitter ‘tells’: Like browsing through a journalist’s contacts file
In my (long ago) days as a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, I used to keep a monster steel rotary contact file next to my telephone. It was my lifeblood. In it were contained the names and contact information for the vast majority of my sources. Often, on my source cards, I also noted […]
Will Natalie Portman portray this WSJ editor?
The life stories of some influential journalists are just as fascinating as the public figures they chronicle. As Page One editor of The Wall Street Journal — a post she assumed one year ago — Rebecca Blumenstein covets profiles of men and woman whose personal and professional journeys intrigue, inspire and stand to educate readers. […]
The ties that connect Nelson Rockefeller, Henry Luce and the Times’ Gardiner Harris
The bride, according to news reports, wore an ivory antique-lace blouse and a blue and ivory silk brocade skirt belonging to her maternal grandmother, Elizabeth Roberts Clark. The groom, a seventh-generation Kentuckian, was an award-winning journalist and editor – a protégé of Henry Luce – the founder of Time, Fortune and Life magazines. Both bride […]
Do you know me? A biz journalist unexposed in India
To what extent, if any, do mainstream journalists owe the public details of their personal lives, when their backgrounds might influence the prism through which the journalists filter the facts at hand? Would you prepare differently to be interviewed by an influential writer if, for example, you knew that he or she has ties to […]
Self-interest is on the job in newsrooms
Journalists seldom like to talk about how they handle the 800-pound gorilla in the newsroom. Some deny it even exists. But whether they walk around it, close their eyes to it, try to tame it, or proudly showcase it, every journalist in every mainstream newsroom is influenced by the presence of his or her own […]
