Readers pay the salaries of business journalists
Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Zweig writes about the time he wanted to respond sarcastically to a reader who criticized one of his stories. Zweig writes: It’s never good news when the managing editor walks into a lowly reporter’s cubicle. One day in early 1990, I looked up from my desk at Forbes magazine to […]
A bot warns FT journalists when they quote too many men
The Financial Times is warning its journalists if their articles quote too many men, in an attempt to force writers to look for expert women to include in their pieces, reports Jim Waterson of The Guardian. Waterson writes, “The media organisation found that only 21% of people quoted in the FT were women, prompting the […]
Biz journalists want to write exclusive stories, not just disseminate: Study
Business journalists prefer to write articles with exclusive content that comes from sources inside companies rather than simply disseminating information that companies provide to everyone, according to research released this week. Four business school professors — Andrew C. Call, Scott A. Emett and Eldar Maksymov of Arizona State University and Nathan Y. Sharp of Texas […]
Primack of Axios explains the world of business reporting
Dan Primack, the business editor at Axios, talked with the “Teach me How to Money” podcast about his career in business news. Primack said he got into journalism in 1999 after running a community newspaper in Boston. “I needed a job to pay for the ridiculously expensive apartment in Midtown,” said Primack. He grabbed a […]
How companies treat elderly workers is a ProPublica beat
Richard Eisenberg of Forbes.com interviewed ProPublic contributing reporter Peter Gosselin about his beat covering how companies are treating elderly workers. Here is an excerpt: How did the IBM story come about? I was talking to the young woman who became my co-author on the project, an engagement reporter at ProPublica named Ariana Tobin. When I […]
The business media and its nostalgia for the crisis
Aaron Timms of The Week writes about the nostalgia for the economic crisis that the business news media exhibited during its 10-year anniversary. Timms writes, “The 10th anniversary of the financial crisis has arrived with the predictable, month-long blizzard of retrospectives and commemorations in the business media. These segments have dutifully checked off all the main […]
Why business journalism cannot be like sports reporting
Barbara Serra of Al-Jazeera takes a look at the failure of business journalism in covering the economic crisis 10 years ago and the challenges in covering business and finance issues. “‘The media are still very obsessed with the issues that created the last crisis,’ said Gillian Tett, U.S. managing editor at the Financial Times, told Serra. […]
What Business Insider looks for in a reporter
Business Insider global editor in chief Nicholas Carlson spoke with Aditi Singal of Digiday about what it looks for in a reporter. Here is an excerpt: Competing with other business publications. “We still have cost structure advantages over the Journal and other great business publications that are out there that we’re still chasing. We can get what they have, […]
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 […]
