How “Planet Money” is successful: Making the abstract real
Robert Smith of the National Public Radio program “Planet Money” spoke at the Audiocraft Podcast festival about how the shot is put together, taking complex economic ideas and turning them into interesting stories. 2018 is the 10-year anniversary of “Planet Money,” which has had 845 episodes. The first episode was “The Giant Pool of Money” about […]
Dear biz reporters: Stop comparing GDP to market cap
Dan Mitchell writes for Columbia Journalism Review about how business journalists are incorrectly comparing a company’s market capitalization to a company’s gross domestic product. Mitchell writes, “Thursday’s USA Today story similarly described what Apple could ‘buy’ with the money represented by its market cap. But that’s not Apple’s money—it’s owned by shareholders. If Apple wanted to use its […]
How The Penny Hoarder ensures credibility in its coverage
Tommy Flaim of TapeACall.com interviewed The Penny Hoarder managing editor John Schlander about how the personal finance news organization ensures credibility in its coverage. Here is an excerpt: How do you ensure your sources contribute to the credibility of a story? What tools do you use to record in-person and phone interviews? Depending on the type of story, […]
Tech journalist creates site to help reporters working on tech stories
A technology journalist has created a website that helps other reporters get answers to questions about technology. Tech4Reporters was created by John Biggs, who writes for TechCrunch, so that reporters can ask questions about the latest tech news and where technologists – programmers, engineers, designers, and thinkers – can answer in an anonymous or open […]
Why McLean likes to look into companies where things “don’t add up”
Business journalist Bethany McLean was interviewed by Patrick O’Shaughnessy on the “Invest like the Best” about how she researches companies. “I think the process of throughly researching an investment is really analogous of what I do,” said McLean, who currently works for Vanity Fair. “The real difference is what’s actionable. For me, it’s creating a […]
How one Bloomberg reporter chased a CEO
Tommaso Ebhardt of Bloomberg News writes about how he spent a decade covering Fiat Chrysler Automobiles CEO Sergio Marchionne. Ebhardt writes, “I’ve been chasing Marchionne for about a decade, all over the world. I once drove seven hours over the Alps, then spent hours more in front of a closed door on a frozen Swiss […]
How Gelles got an interview with Bernie Madoff
Sam Goldman of the Cal-Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism profiled New York Times business reporter David Gelles, who had a prison interview with Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff. Goldman writes, “Gelles was at The Financial Times when Bernie Madoff was arrested. Almost immediately after, the reporter happened to find out that a friend of a friend of a […]
Tips on how to vet potential biz news sources
Reporters in the financial media world will inevitably need to source their articles with experts who are new to them, and perhaps not well known in the finance community. So how do reporters audit their potential sources? Does an official bio on the company site do the trick? How about a well-written LinkedIn profile? Do […]
Biz journalism is difficult when companies refuse to comment
Steven Pearlstein, a columnist at the Washington Post, examines the increasingly regularity of companies declining to comment to business journalists. Pearlstein writes, “With the help of Post researcher Magda Jean-Louis, I did an unscientific search of the Times Business section for the past six months looking for instances of companies that declined to comment or […]
How Michael Barbaro got interested in business journalism
Kara Swisher of Recode interviewed Michael Barbaro of the New York Times — who now hosts its podcast “The Daily” — on the Recode Decode podcast, and one of the topics they discussed was how he got into business journalism. Here is an excerpt: How did you get to the Times, from? From the Washington Post. The […]
