Business journalism and the economic crisis: Some good and some bad

The financial press did a an excellent job of covering the growing problems in the housing market, but didn’t do a good job of explaining what that would mean to the economy, said two prominent business journalists on Friday.

“The press did not do a good job of connecting what was going on with Main Street with what was going on on Wall Street,” said Joe Nocera, a Saturday business columnist with the New York Times. “I am embarrassed to say I didn’t know what a collateralized debt obligation was until the crisis was gaining steam. That was a mistake on my part.”

Added Jonathan Weil, a columnist for Bloomberg: “What we didn’t understand was being able to look past those rising housing prices” to see what the impact would be.

Weil and Nocera spoke at the fall Society of American Business Editors and Writers conference, which is being held at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism in New York.

In terms of how business journalism has adjusted to the economy, Nocera noted that the Times now has a full-time reporter whose job now is to cover foreclosures.

“There are very few people in structured finance, let alone journalists, who understand structured finance,” said Weil. Earlier, he said, “Covering regulation — when was the last time you saw IRS rules and regulations get a lot of attention in the mainstream press?”

Nocera, however, thought the problems in the real estate market were covered well.

“When I think back on it, not necessarily my coverage per se, I think the press, if you look, back, did a good job of exposing the growing problem of subprime mortgages on Main Street,” he said. “Fortune did a ton of stuff on this. The Wall Street Journal did a ton on this.”

The next big financial story that business journalists should be looking at, said Weil, is credit unions. “They’re not getting covered by anybody,” he said.

He also noted that Bloomberg has hired a number of reporters to cover municipal debt across the country.