How to kick butt in business journalism
Business Insider executive editor Joe Weisenthal and deputy editor Nicholas Carlson recently gave college students advice on how to be a great business journalist, reports Dan Reimold of PBS MediaShift. Here is some of their advice: 8. Test Story Ideas on Twitter During his portion of the talk, Weisenthal confirmed what his 40,000 Twitter followers […]
Cyprus saved. Or is it?
Finance ministers agreed early Monday on a bailout for the Mediterranean island of Cyprus. While the agreement averted the near-term disaster, much of the coverage focused on the fact that the aftermath is going to do long-term damage to the island’s finances and population. Here’s the top of the Wall Street Journal story: Cyprus secured […]
Fankie Flack: PR, Wikipedia and the business journalist
Last week I noticed an article in PR Week, a public relations trade magazine, that the ongoing debate over PR and Wikipedia has again reared its ugly head. This site has become a fascinating, perplexing and aggravating focus of the PR industry as its open-source basis creates functional and ethical problems for our industry. For […]
Covering the business of health care
One of the biggest expenses many people will incur is the cost of a long-term illness or recovery from an accident. It’s no secret that hospital stays are expensive and that’s not likely to change even after the Affordable Care Act. Covering these costs will be an important part of business journalism going forward. The […]
Biz journalism organization receives non-profit status
Ben Steelman of the Wilmington Star-News in North Carolina reports that the Southern Investigative Reporting Foundation, which is researching and writing investigative business journalism stories, has achieved non-profit status. Steelman writes, “As a result, SIRF will function entirely on donations, with funds being funneled through Independent News Network. Boyd — who specializes in detailed, document-driven […]
Retail sales jump, but by how much?
The fact that retail sales were up 1.1 percent made headlines in the major business papers and web sites. But the placement of the so-called core number, the one most watched by economists and other market analysts, in various stories is something to note. The New York Times put the core number in the fourth paragraph […]
Celebrating open records
When a friend texted a picture of an alert from our local television station that said “Video: Coverage of Sunshine,” I laughed out loud. Then I went to see what the story was really about since I was fairly sure that the sun rising didn’t count for news (at least not yet). It’s Sunshine Week. […]
The changed PR-journalist equation
Last week my former Associated Press client Tori Ekstrand invited me to speak at the School of Journalism & Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. After a two–hour snow delay in New York, I finally found my way to the Freedom Forum Center on campus where Tori, now an assistant […]
Frankie Flack: How did I get this terrible pitch?
A few weeks ago I used this column to complain about how marketing fundamentals were invading the public relations field and eroding media relations basics. New tools for a new era of engagement has had a sweeping impact on the public relations field. While I firmly believe that this new way of thinking has been […]
What business journalists can get out of an MBA
Louise Story of The New York Times writes for a Columbia University website, Covering Business, about how an MBA can help a business journalist. Story writes, “Accounting, Statistics, Excel – if those sound like dirty words to you, you might consider forcing yourself to learn them. The basic concepts of accounting – flows versus stocks, […]
