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 […]
Why business journalists rarely do investigations
Whitney Curry Wimbish writes for The Baffler about why business journalism rarely does investigations. Wimbish writes, “Journalists, like economists, are worried that if they step outside those common explanations they’ll be branded as radicals and excluded from the profession, Wolff said. As for Goldman, it excels at using some media outlets to burnish its image. ‘They […]
How Reuters reported the AT&T/Time Warner ruling
A Reuters story posted Thursday explains how the wire service reported the judge’s ruling allowing AT&T Corp. to acquire Time Warner. The story states, “Reuters reporters Diane Bartz and David Shepardson stood in line from 7 a.m. that morning to secure two of the 27 seats reserved for reporters. Shepardson’s seat was the more advantageous […]
How a real estate reporter conducts a stakeout
Kirk Pinho, the real estate reporter at Crain’s Detroit Business, writes about staking out Michigan Central Station to break the story that Ford Motor Co. was purchasing the building. Pinho writes, “First it was every couple of days that I got in my car and scouted for new activity at the building. Then it became […]
