WSJ’s Gottfried talks about private equity coverage

Russell Sherman of Press Profiles spoke with Miriam Gottfried, senior private equity reporter at The Wall Street Journal, about how she covers her beat.

Gottfried joined the Journal by working on the “Heard on the Street” column about investing in public companies. She moved to private equity in 2017.

“I really wanted a beat that would challenge me to use my financial knowledge,” said Gottfried. “At ‘Heard on the Street,’ you build models. ..I wanted to apply my knowledge of investing into a different lens, and private equity seemed interested.”

She learned how do many business news topics by working with Mark Tatge, who was Chicago bureau chief at Forbes. And she has worked with longtime Journal reporter Mark Maremont. She also earned a master’s degree in business and economics journalism at Columbia University.

“The role of a journalist is to be a bridge between an industry that might be mysterious to people and might be opaque and [you need to] enlighten them, and you need to be an outsider to do this,” she said.

“I’m interested in accountability,” she said. “I’m not interested in nitpicking.”

To listen, go 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.