How to tell executives are serious
Reporters spend a lot of time talking to people on background or off-the-record. It’s an important part of the job and a good way to make sure you’re getting the full story. Even if you can’t quote the head of XX division at XX bank about an issue, having his/her thoughts on a subject can […]
What we need from energy journalists
David Roberts writes on ThinkProgress.org about the type of journalism that needs to be practiced in terms of covering energy companies. Roberts writes, “There are finance and business journalists who cover energy as a commodity business, tracking global supply and demand flows, prices, futures trading, all that sort of stuff. There are business and tech […]
Ten Twitter ‘tells’: Like browsing through a journalist’s contacts file
In my (long ago) days as a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, I used to keep a monster steel rotary contact file next to my telephone. It was my lifeblood. In it were contained the names and contact information for the vast majority of my sources. Often, on my source cards, I also noted […]
How Forbes writers follow the money
Business journalists need to write strong beginnings to their stories to attract readers, said Forbes Media LLC vice president and investing editor Matthew Schifrin in conference call to review the essentials of business reporting for its contributors. During the call, Schifrin, a Forbes veteran of 29 years, outlined the way Forbes online contributors should craft […]
A suggested guide for quote approvals
In one of my first posts for Talking Biz 2, I wrote about the process of quote approvals and its prevalence in business journalism. The esteemed New York Times columnist David Carr took up the story on Monday. He writes about his own experience: I’ve had my own encounters. Within the past year, I’ve had […]
News beats vs. phenomena at Quartz
Gideon Litchfield, the global news editor of the new business news site Quartz, writes about how it is organizing its beats in an unusual fashion. Litchfield writes, “So instead of fixed beats, we structure our newsroom around an ever-evolving collection of phenomena—the patterns, trends and seismic shifts that are shaping the world our readers live in. […]
A biz journalist’s great value: Asking hard questions
Because most American business journalists are not working this Labor Day, we’re going Down Under to Ian Verrender, the business columnist for the Sydney Morning Herald who is leaving the Australian paper. Verrender’s goodbye column is on the demise of the business journalist. He writes: Because, unlike politics or sport, those running big business have […]
The business of small business news
Every night the major news programs run through their daily business report, citing the ups and downs of the Dow Jones, the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ. It’s portrayed as a definitive picture of how the economy is doing and has great influence on economic and investing behavior for representing so few companies. But the […]
The investigative reporter that few remember
Michael Hudson of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists profiles Morton Mintz, a former Washington Post reporter who was one of the best ever at investigating companies. Hudson writes, “A story might start with a tip from an informant, but Mintz wouldn’t hang the piece on the insider’s account. He’d go to the public record, […]
Translating earnings into easy-to-understand articles
Arthur Brisbane, the public editor of the New York Times, writes Sunday about how business journalists decipher earnings releases into stories. Brisbane writes, “If you are a reader of these stories, you can be forgiven for not knowing what to think. The problem is not new, but it is changing. Veteran business journalists trace some […]
