More on Overstock/BusinessWeek tussle

The rest of the mass communications world is beginning to catch on to the issues surrounding the posting by Overstock.com President Patrick Byrne of an e-mail interview he had with BusinessWeek e-commerce editor Timothy Mullaney. Blogger expert Dan Gillmor wrote about the issue on his blog at Center for Citizen Media today and stated: “This […]

Follow-up to the Sago mine disaster

Ken Ward Jr., of the Charleston (WV) Gazette had an excellent article last week examining the business ramifications of the mining disaster at Sago and how regulation of the industry has been lax. Here is an excerpt from his story: “Over the past 30 years, the number of teams taking part in the once-popular national […]

Miami Herald biz section wants bloopers

Mimi Whitfield, the Business Monday editor for the Miami Herald, is seeking buisness bloopers from her readers. In the interest of fair disclosure, she disclosed this in today’s newspaper: “But I suspect my most embarrassing job-related faux pas tops these stories. In the interest of disclosure, I’ll share. One Thanksgiving my boss invited the entire […]

UPDATE: BusinessWeek reporter calls and is mad; Overstock head responds on Internet again

The exchange between BusinessWeek e-commerce editor Tim Mullaney and Overstock.com president Patrick Byrne continued on late Friday, with Mullaney apparently calling the company’s Salt Lake headquarters upset that Byrne had posted his responses to Mullaney’s e-mail questions on the Internet. Apparently Mullaney didn’t learn his lesson the first time. Byrne has again responded online, on […]

Earnings season is about to start

Here are some suggestions on how to write earnings stories: It’s important to note that a company can use its earnings releases to put a spin on its performance. Sometimes a company will emphasize strong growth in revenue or sales to mask the fact that it spent a lot of money in the quarter on […]

The pros and cons of companies talking about M&A talks

The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette has an excellent article in today’s newspaper about the pros and cons of a company talking about whether it is involved in negotiations for a merger or acquisition. The paper had a local company that was rumored to be in such a deal. Repeateadly, apparently, the company said it didn’t […]

BusinessWeek, a CEO and the Internet as a medium

How strange is this? Tim Mullaney, the e-business editor at BusinessWeek, sends a detailed and exhaustive list of questions to Scott Blevins, Overstock.com’s director of public relations, via e-mail on Tuesday. The questions are intended for chairman and President Patrick Byrne and other company executives. Byrne responds — I do not know when, but obviously […]

Changing how proxy stories are written in the future

I envision a change in the basic way that executive compensation and proxy stories are written in the future if the proposed SEC rule mentioned in this morning’s USA Today makes its way into an actual regulation. In short, the SEC is considering requiring companies to report a single compensation number for its executives. Here […]

A rite of passage at most business sections — and writers

Andrew Cassel, who writes about the economy for the Philadelphia Inquirer, sums up what probably happened on a lot of business desks earlier this week: “We used to have a kind of ritual in the newsroom: Whenever the Dow Jones industrial average hit some number that ended in three zeros, a top editor would emerge […]

Press release masquerading as a WSJ story

That’s the conclusion that Fortune senior writer Devin Leonard reached about the Wall Street Journal’s coverage of the change in management at parent Dow Jones & Co. last week. “The newspaper read — and feared — by everybody in corporate America published the equivalent of a press release,” wrote Leonard. He added: “Here’s what you […]