When robots write business news
CFO magazine has an interesting item about how Thomson Financial and Reuters are now both using computers to help write news stories. At Thomson, computers are writing some earnings stories. The downside, according to one person quoted in the story, is that when companies realize that it’s computers writing the stories about their earnings and […]
How Philly Inquirer biz coverage changed with new owner
Editor & Publisher’s Joe Strupp examined how business news coverage changed at the Philadelphia Inquirer after the paper was sold in the Knight-Ridder/McClatchy deal to local owners, including Bruce Toll, whose brother is the CEO of local homebuilder Toll Bros. Â Strupp wrote, “The Philadelphia Inquirer had written about Horsham, Pa.-based Toll Brothers Inc. numerous […]
CEO calls cops on Wall Street Journal reporter
Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce.com, apparently called the police on a Wall Street Journal who was looking into the huge mansion he was building in Hawaii, according to the Silicon Valley website Valleywag. Valleywag wrote, “The Journal avoided mention of the clash when the piece went to print. You may remember the reporter’s name, […]
Not guilty pleas in Hewlett-Packard spy case
Former Hewlett-Packard chairwoman Patricia Dunn and other former company executives pleaded not guilty to charges that they illegally obtained information about board members and business journalists to discover who was leaking information about the company. Pete Carey of the San Jose Mercury News wrote, “Dunn, who ordered the investigation, and four others have been charged […]
Des Moines biz section's bad luck
The business section of the Des Moines Register ran a story on the front of its Tuesday business section that featured local company Two Rivers Marketing and its founder Tom Dunphy. The only problem, according to an Editor & Publisher story, was that the front page of the paper had a story about a plane […]
Former BW Asia editor in hot water with new staff
Former BusinessWeek Asia editor Mark Clifford, who has been editor of the South China Morning Post for most of this year, has upset many of his staff members for firing employees involved in putting together a mock newspaper front page for another editorial staff member who was leaving the paper. Clifford objected to an expletive […]
Business 2.0 blogs won't jeopardize journalist integrity
Josh Quittner, editor of Business 2.0, stated in a radio interview for the show “On the Media” that he doesn’t believe that the decision to pay the magazine’s reporters based on how many hits their blogs receive will hurt their ethics. In an interview with Bob Garfield, Quittner stated, “If my writers start to write […]
ShareSleuth posts second article; Cuban again short
The investigative business journalism Web site ShareSleuth has posted its second story since it started this summer, and once again majority owner Mark Cuban has shorted stock in the company that the piece focuses on. The piece is about UTEK Corp., a Florida-based technology transfer company, and the article states, “Cuban also has sold short […]
How a biz reporter got his Skilling interview
In the wake of former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling being sentenced to more than two decades in prison earlier this week, former Dow Jones Newswire reporter Jason Leopold recounts how he was able to obtain an interview with the disgraced corporate leader right after the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy court protection. (I won’t get […]
Former Reuters editor still wonders why he was fired
Joe Maguire, the former Reuters markets editor and author of Brainless: The Lies and Lunacy of Ann Coulter, is still wondering what he did to force the international business news wire service to let him go when the book was published, according to a Q&A in Gelf Magazine. Here are some excerpts: GM: Did the […]
