Categories: OLD Media Moves

Business journalism is an adversarial role

Brian James Kirk of Technically Philly profiles Philadelphia Inquirer business columnist Joe DiStefano about his job and how he covers technology.

Kirk writes, “With the pressure of updating a daily news blog in addition to his regular column in the Philadelphia Inquirer, columnist Joseph N. DiStefano says that the biggest change over the last few years in the newspaper offices at 400 N. Broad is acceleration.

“‘It’s a lot easier to get a hold of key documents and get answers to a lot of basic questions online,’ says DiStefano, who pens the Inky’s PhillyDeals column.

“‘But reporting is reporting. News is information that someone else wants to suppress.’

“DiStefano has the gruff exterior one might expect of a veteran newspaper columnist who writes hard news about regional business.

“‘I used to tell CEOs that if you’re indicted, I will cheerfully write that story on page one. Not to celebrate indictment, but because we have the space there,’ he says. ‘It’s an adversarial role.'”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.