AP biz editor Gibbs talks about her job, business journalism

Longtime business journalist Lisa Gibbs became the Associated Press business editor in August, overseeing more than 65 business reporters and editors worldwide.

Since that time, she has been traveling around the world to familiarize herself with AP’s business coverage.

Before joining the AP, Gibbs was at Money magazine, where she was a three-time finalist for the Gerald Loeb Award for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism and shared the honor with her colleagues in 2012 for a series on protecting aging parents’ money. Most recently, she has been the real estate section chief of the newly launched Money.com.

Before joining Money in 2009, Gibbs, 49, was executive business editor at the Miami Herald. The Herald’s business section was honored twice by the Society of American Business Editors and Writers with its top award for general excellence during her five-year tenure. A native of Hollywood, Fla., she also has worked as the South Florida editor for Florida Trend magazine.

Gibbs graduated from the University of Miami with majors in journalism and economics. She previously served on the board of SABEW and now chairs its international committee.

Gibbs spoke by telephone with Talking Biz News about her new job. What follows is an edited transcript.

What did you think of AP’s business coverage before you took the job?

I’ve always been in awe of the scope and comprehensiveness of AP’s reporting and, when I was at the Miami Herald, absolutely relied on AP for stories about important national news and trends. Coming from a personal finance magazine, though, I felt like a lot of the coverage didn’t speak directly enough to the consumer. Either in the tone of the stories or the topics. Naturally, there were historical reasons for that. The business department mandate had been oriented toward producing lots of corporate news for the “educated investor.” It was time to change that.

What made you decide to take the position?

After leaving the Miami Herald, I had returned to magazine writing while seeing my children through high school. I viewed my time at Money as a last personal hurrah as a writer, of sorts, with a goal of producing some high-impact investigative consumer watchdog pieces.

But I had really started to itch to get back into management, with the ability to lead coverage on a large scale. When the AP job came along, all of that clicked into place. Covering business for consumers around the world – being on top of the biggest breaking news stories combined with the opportunity to pull off some killer enterprise? Come on! How cool is that?

What have you been doing since you became global business editor?

The AP is a massive organization compared to where I’d worked in the past, so a lot of what I’ve been doing is listening and learning. For example, I’ve traveled to Washington, D.C. a couple of times to meet our staff there and the rest of the DC bureau leadership. And to London to meet with our Europe editors and reporters; that’s also where AP’s global video operation is based. I’ve also been trying to reach out more, and more often, to business editors around the world who use our stories. Building those connections and staying in touch with what other media organizations are doing, the challenges they’re facing and the kinds of coverage that will help them, is an important goal of mine.

And, naturally, I’ve been working with the other editors here on the business desk to assess the needs and set some coverage goals for the future.

So, where does AP need to change or improve its business news coverage?

One big goal is reorienting the coverage – in both the choices of stories to cover and how we write it – as much toward the general consumer as possible. For example, since the end of the recession, we haven’t covered housing as robustly as some other topics. Especially as a former real estate reporter, this struck me as an oversight, to say the least! So we’ve put reporters in place to do that. We’ve also brought back a consumer banking reporter.

The other thing is that we need to aim a lot higher on investigative and explanatory work. We have experienced reporters and global reach, and we are starting to leverage that more.

We’ve recently come off a great run on the Sony hack story, and produced a lot of smart work very fast on the oil price plunge, the global economy. An example of the kind of enterprise piece I want us to do more of is the insightful look at how gay boomers are facing retirement in worse financial shape than straight counterparts. And we’ve some great big projects in the works.

Whom do you see as AP’s biggest competitors for business news?

The obvious answer is Reuters, but clearly in a mobile, digital world it is everyone, including smaller niche sites.

Will the focus be more on covering breaking news or enterprise stories?

Well, we have to excel at both. What we need to do is make sure we’re covering the right breaking news and enterprise. That formula is where the energy goes.

We haven’t talked about earnings automation yet, but that’s a perfect illustration of what I’m talking about. Automating stories about corporate earnings was well in motion before I arrived, but I’ve been here for its launch and, now, its expansion so I’ve seen the power of it. In a nutshell, we used to have reporters and editors writing up about 300 earnings stories quarterly. Because of automation, we’re now producing 3,000 with fewer resources. Meanwhile, beat reporters can now focus on the truly interesting and important stories that come out of earnings day, for the biggest and most well-known companies.

Will you miss writing?

Very much so, but I seem to always miss what I’m not doing at the moment. I like to think, and I advise other journalists, that one shouldn’t feel like they have to stay in the writing or editing lane. I’ve jumped back and forth throughout my career and I think been the better for it.