WSJ names Nixon its chief Euro commentator
Thorold Barker, the Wall Street Journal editor who oversees coverage of Europe, the Middle East and Africa, sent out the following staff promotion on Monday: I am delighted to announce that Simon Nixon is appointed Chief European Commentator of the Wall Street Journal. High quality commentary and analysis is an increasingly […]
Access is one of the biz media’s problems
Brett Arends of Marketwatch.com writes about the problems in the media, and includes one that is particularly an issue in financial journalism. Arends writes, “In early 2007, when the subprime crisis first blew up, some executives at big mortgage lending companies were going around telling everyone that their companies were okay. But I reported at […]
Getting lit up: How PR people become the story
Every now and then my email will suddenly become inundated with emails from friends and colleagues in the PR industry all emailing me one story. Before evening opening any one of these notes I know exactly what the content of the story will be — a story featuring some PR person doing something stupid. Sometimes […]
A mastery of complicated topics
Gilbert Bailon of The St. Louis Post-Dispatch writes Sunday about the paper’s business columnist, David Nicklaus. Bailon writes, “A native of small-town Iowa, Nicklaus has worked for the Post-Dispatch Business staff for 31 years as a reporter, editor and columnist. As a columnist, Nicklaus specializes in bringing down-to-earth analysis of broad themes such as budget […]
No golden age of business journalism
Columbia University’s Todd Gitlin writes about the lack of a Golden Age in journalism for Salon magazine, and uses financial journalism as an example. Gitlin writes, “Start to finish, financial journalism was breathless about the market thrills that led to the 2007-2008 crash: the financialization of the global economy, the metastasis of derivatives, and especially […]
San Diego paper names new biz columnist
Dan McSwain is the new business columnist at the Union-Tribune in San Diego. McSwain writes, “In college I pursued a writing career, eventually becoming the editor-in-chief of the college newspaper. I left college, along with a good job as a business reporter at a daily newspaper, to go back to work for my father. “My […]
Frankie Flack: In a crisis, focus on those affected, not the biz media
Given the events of last week, it seems appropriate to spend some time discussing communications principles in the time of a crisis for a business. There are a number of ways to define a crisis, and in fact, there are many divergent views on how best to handle a corporate crisis from a PR perspective. […]
Houston biz columnist says goodbye
Loren Steffy, the business columnist at the Houston Chronicle, says goodbye to his readers after nine years writing the column. Steffy is joining a strategic communications firm with some of his former Bloomberg News colleagues. Steffy writes, “More than nine years ago, when former Chronicle editor Jeff Cohen first discussed a column, he asked me […]
I cover hedge funds, not skin cream
For public relations professionals, building strong relationships with reporters is the best way to collaborate on story ideas. However, PR pros are occasionally tasked with getting exposure in a completely new area, one in which they cannot rely on their current contact list. In these situations, it is best to do a thorough background check […]
Board members and business journalists
Two conversations I’ve had this week about board members of publicly traded companies have got me thinking about directors and business journalists. The first conversation was with a student in my “Business Reporting” class. Each student in the class has to write a final project paper on a publicly traded company here in North Carolina. […]
