Liz Claman on the art of covering Warren Buffett

Fox Business Network anchor Liz Claman will interview Berkshire Hathaway executives Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, as well as Microsoft founder Bill Gates, on the air on Monday at 3 p.m.

This past weekend, she covered Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting in Omaha.

Claman joined Fox Business in 2007, and her first interview for the network was Buffett.  Claman, who renewed her contract with the network in 2015, anchors “Countdown to the Closing Bell.”

Prior to joining Fox Business, Claman served as an anchor at CNBC, most recently anchoring “Morning Call” and “Cover to Cover.” Before CNBC, Claman served as an anchor and reporter for Boston’s WHDH-TV.

She was also a contributing correspondent for NBC’s syndicated daytime program “RealLife.”  Prior to that, she anchored a two-hour daily talk show, “The Morning Exchange” for WEWS-TV in Cleveland.  She received an Emmy for her work on “The Morning Exchange.”

Claman spoke by email with Talking Biz News about covering Buffett and about Fox Business Network. What follows is an edited transcript.

How do you prepare to interview Warren Buffett?

My preparation starts the day I leave Nebraska after every year’s meeting. Berkshire Hathaway is one of America’s biggest companies, a huge employer here in the U.S., and Buffett is larger than life in so many ways for his shareholders and followers so, from the moment I get back from the meeting, I begin compiling research for the next year. The “next year” starts today (Friday) and we’re locked and loaded.

Are there topics with him that are off limits, like what companies he’s looking at investing in?

I’m not the journalist to be asking about “off limits.” I never ever agree to “off limit” topics with anyone. Other journalists might but not me. And by the way, Mr. Buffett knows that. He has never asked me “not to ask” about anything because he knows he’ll get the wrath of the red-head.

But it’s more than that. Unlike many other CEOs, he is completely unafraid of being questioned on *any* topic. He always says to me, “Throw them hard and throw them at my head.” And if he doesn’t want to answer, he politely says so.

Why is what Buffett says such an important business news story?

Because he’s arguably the most successful investor of our time. But his genius isn’t so much in his secret ideas. It’s the fact that he’s the most disciplined investor out there. He has a plan, he has his rules and he sticks to them. He never panics, nor does he jump in on a momentum trade.

He buys great companies at fair prices. And he only sells when he wants the money to buy something else. But when he buys, it moves stocks, it sometimes even moves entire sectors, like when he bought an entire railroad, Burlington Northern.

How has he changed during the time that you’ve been covering him?

He hasn’t. I’ve known him for 14 years and from an investment standpoint, he’s still, as I said, disciplined to a T. And from a personal standpoint, his energy level is still so high. This shareholder weekend is a killer. No sleep, constant running and gunning. The crew and I get wrecked we’re so tired but he’s running around, talking to shareholders (40,000 of them) greeting the world, and eating Dairy Queen and peanut brittle.

The ONLY thing that has changed happened last year. I had flown to Omaha because he granted me and Fox Business the first exclusive interview of 2015 — Berkshire’s 50th anniversary. We went to dinner that night together and for the first time ever, he ordered a salad instead of a steak.

How has Fox Business evolved since you joined in 2007?

I’m so proud to say I’m a Fox Business original. I took the chance to come to a start-up that everyone said didn’t stand a chance in heck against CNBC, my former network. People thought I was nuts. Interestingly, Warren Buffett was one of the few who told me I should go to Fox Business. He’s a big Rupert Murdoch believer.

But when we started it was very raw. We barely had the walls up both literally and figuratively, which meant we could take a lot of chances and see what worked and what didn’t. No one outside the building seemed to want us to succeed. I’ll be honest, I fought hand-to-hand combat with competitors on stories and on the days we lost, I’d actually get emotional.

But never ONCE did I ever think, “We’re not going to win.” We had a management change last year. Bill Shine came over to run Fox Business from the Fox News side and with that came new ideas. Suddenly, we’ve won dozens of head-to-head show match-ups with other networks, and this is key here — we’ve done it on big market days.

The NYSE glitch on July 8 of last summer, some of the Greece/European Union drama days, the China economic slowdown — we won a bunch of those. One of my favorite moments was when my sister Danielle called and told me that during a conference call with her entertainment company in L.A. during the NYSE shutdown, everyone on the call was saying how scary the situation was and another producer piped in on the call and said, “If you want to know what’s going on, watch Danielle’s sister Liz on Fox Business. I was just glued to the TV and then when I had to drive to work, I listened to her on XM radio.” I

thought, “Well, if Hollywood producers are turning to us now, that’s a sign we’re getting an audience beyond the narrow trading world the other guys have.” And I’m thrilled to say the evolution continues.

What are your goals on Countdown each day?

To inform viewers about the forces moving their money. That’s goal No. 1 during the final hour of trading.

But it doesn’t help anyone if we simply follow the tick-by-tick moves. We build the guests around the news, vs. the other way around. Politics is crucial these days for obvious reasons but so are international issues, so we work very hard to make sure we give our viewers immense perspective in those areas as well, always with a business news spin.

Oh, and a little personality throughout the hour never hurts. I want people to consider my show “appointment television.” I want them to think, “It’s 3 p.m. Gotta watch Liz to see what’s happening to my money and to the world.”

Why do you think Fox Business has seen an increase in its ratings recently?

Let me go back to the NYSE glitch. It almost feels like that was a turning point. The entire trading system crashed and caught the world off-guard. Neil Cavuto did some of the best television news broadcasting I’ve ever seen. I knew that by the final hour of trade, the world would be watching. I jumped in a car and rushed to Wall Street to do my entire show live from the floor.

By then NYSE officials STILL hadn’t come out to speak with the press to explain what was going on. It was very tense and we refused to cut them any breaks. Charlie Gasparino and I were arguing on air about the perceived importance of the NYSE. Nicole Petallides and I were double-teaming the NYSE officials, we cancelled all commercial breaks and gave viewers a second-by-second explanation.

I was very proud of my entire show team and of the whole network. When the ratings came out, it proved that viewers turned to us. From that moment on, it was as if the herd shifted. By January the news was out: Fox Business was the fastest growing network of 2015. I have the headline framed in my office.

What do you like the most about doing the show each day?

I absolutely love connecting with viewers. And for me, the closing bell is that all-important hour of trade so I know people are highly interested in what’s going to happen. My executive producer Brad Hirst and I are on the same page about it: get people news that matters to their money, get them breaking news as fast and as accurately as possible, and above all, get it right.

I got into this business to inform people, and every single day I think about that as I walk onto the set. I am so grateful I get to do that and I never take it for granted.