Fox Business story on Super Bowl attendance is misguided

Timothy Burke of Deadspin writes Friday about a Fox Business Network story on low Super Bowl attendance and how its premise is faulty. Burke writes, “Fox Business Network attempted to report on Super Bowl ticket sales today with threats that ‘the NFL is expecting record-low attendance.’ That’s not true, but somehow what reporter Elizabeth MacDonald […]

How CNBC vetted the 17-year-old investor scam

Jana Kasperkevic and Heidi Moore of The Guardian write Saturday about how a 17-year-old high schooler from New York was able to convince some business publications to write about his non-existent trading success without any verification and how CNBC backed away from the story. Kasperkevic and Moore write, “They were 15 minutes late to CNBC, […]

Yes, a PR person and a biz journalist can get along

Roxana Janka, a public relations specialist at The Phelps Group, writes about her working relationship with New York Times advertising reporter Stuart Elliott, who is leaving the paper on Friday. Janka writes, “I once pitched him a story about an impossibly difficult board game that came with the chance to win $1 million. There wasn’t […]

North Carolina governor attacks AP story about his business dealings

North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory has attacked an Associated Press story that stated he received a six-figure stock payout from an online mortgage broker that is regulated by the state. Craig Jarvis of The (Raleigh) News & Observer writes, “McCrory spent Wednesday denouncing the article, which documented his receipt of early vested restricted stock from […]

Ritholtz: What I would have asked high school “investor”

Barry Ritholtz writes for Bloomberg View about the New York high school student who duped New York magazine reporter Jessica Pressler into believing he had amassed a $72 million portfolio by investing during lunch breaks. Ritholtz writes, “But in thinking about this episode, I started jotting down questions I might’ve asked the whiz-kid trader if […]

We need fewer stenographers in journalism and more investigators

Daniel Harrison writes on Medium about the risks of PR in the financial and political press creating instances of conflict of interests. Harrison writes, “To conclude this brief political and economic examination of the current media landscape, while wire journalists as establishments such as Associated Press and Reuters have their role to play, by and […]

Michael Lewis: Find value, and you find a story

Sam Strimling of The Daily Californian interviewed financial journalist Michael Lewis, the author of “Liar’s Poker” and “The Big Short.” Here is an excerpt: DC: Do you feel like writing about finance changed the way you write about other subjects? ML: In both “The Blind Side” and “Moneyball,” value is at the center of the […]

How journalists can spot stories in data

Daniel Mark Harrison writes on his blog about how business reporters can increasingly find stories in data instead of having others point out the significance of the data. Harrison writes, “The purpose of this post is not to reveal what the results are – that would be writing the story, then, after all. Rather, it is to […]

Covering the GM airbag recall

Bob Goetz, assistant editor for the business desk of the New York Times, describes the all-hands-on-deck approach to presenting the months-long story on the greater impact of auto recalls by the paper in a Times Insider piece. Goetz writes: It was April, and for weeks, reporters including the Detroit bureau chief, Bill Vlasic, along with […]

Bloomberg’s Winkler: Enterprise stories should include one female voice

Bloomberg News editor in chief Matthew Winkler included the following in his weekly notes to the staff: All Bloomberg News enterprise work must include at least one woman’s voice, and preferably a balance of men and women. Women are engaged in every topic we cover. Our journalism should reflect that variety. See MSG6 BNWOMENSOURCE for […]