What's wrong with business journalism education?

At the American Press Institute seminar I am attending today, along with a dozen business editors from publications throughout North America, I heard some feedback about what our universities and colleges are doing wrong when it comes to teaching students about business journalism. –A business editor from New Jersey stated that he spoke to a […]

Reynolds Center survey of business editors

Today at an American Press Institute workshop for business editors in Reston, Va., the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism presented some interesting research on business section content. Here is a summary of some of the highlights: 112 respondents to the survey from May to July, with about half of the respondents coming […]

More criticism of holiday retail coverage

More criticism of holiday retail coverage can be found at www.boingboing.com in an essay by Dale Dougherty, who notes that many retail reporters simply accept as fact what is given them by the National Retail Federation. You can read Dale’s essay here.

Why the fascination with newspaper circulation data?

I spent part of my weekend examing a week’s worth of business sections for about eight newspapers from across the country. They were the newspapers in San Jose, Cleveland, San Francisco, Laredo, Waterbury, Conn., and a couple of others. OK, go ahead and call me a geek for reading business sections on the weekend, but […]

Cutbacks at Chicago Tribune

According to a memo posted on the Romenesko site from Anne Marie Lipinski, the Chicago Tribune editor, the largest paper in the Midwest is cutting back on its business coverage, among other things, to save money. Here is the specific wording from the memo, which can be found here: The newspaper will “scale back staffing […]

Another business story busted

I woke up Monday morning to a breathless report on NBC-TV’s “Today” show about Cyber Monday being the biggest online shopping day of the year. Later in the day, I saw other online reports about this shopping event, which equates to Black Friday for the retailers. Here are some of those stories: 1. Reuters story […]

Contradictory stories

Very rarely in business journalism do you see an instance of one prominent media outlet reporting on a business story and then another prominent media outlet reporting on the same story but essentially saying that the other media outlet got it wrong. But that’s the case with the coverage of money manager Private Capital Management’s […]

Business journalism as defined by a student

I found this on the blog of a college student. I do not know the name of the college or the name of the student. But I thought this was an interesting definition of the business journalism course he/she is taking. “To be honest, I know what business journalism is. I know it’s going to […]

LA Times and Chicago Trib considering cutting stock listings

The story was in the Wall Street Journal this morning. You can read it here. This does not surprise me. Many newspapers have cut their stock listings in the past few years, and some papers only run the stocks that are widely held in their area. But the big metropolitan papers have always run a […]

NY Review of Books criticizes business journalism

In the Dec. 15, 2005 issue of the New York Review of Books, which is now available online, there is a commentary by Michael Massing called The Press: The Enemy Within. The thesis of the commentary is that much of the media’s problems are due to their own problems. When it comes to business journalism, […]