Remembering the quintessential business editor

Don Bauder

Jeff McDonald of the San Diego Union-Tribune writes about its former business editor, Don Bauder, who died recently at the age of 88.

McDonald writes, “Craig D. Rose, the former Union-Tribune technology and utilities reporter hired by Bauder in 1987, said his old editor was renowned across the newsroom for standing by his reporters and keeping meticulous tabs on the thousands of pages or documents piled high on his desk.

“‘He knew the markets. He knew filings. He knew the SEC, and he knew about financial scams and how they worked,’ he said. ‘One of his best lines was, ‘Most thievery is legal.’’

“Bauder would never ask someone to do a job he would not do himself, Rose said.

“‘Nothing was beneath him,’ he said. ‘If you asked him to sweep the floor, he would sweep the floor and come back with a story about rip-offs in the cleaning industry. He had an insider’s knowledge of corporate complexity and an outsider’s outrage.'”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.