Business journalism not always in Cavuto's blood

Vicki Hyman of the Newark Star-Ledger profiles Fox Business Network anchor and managing editor Neil Cavuto, a longtime New Jersey resident.

Hyman writes, “‘I hear ‘Depression.’ ‘It’s the end of the world.’ ‘If you’ve got a lead suit, get it out.’ We’ve been through worse,’ Cavuto says. ‘I always try to provide that perspective. Times could be worse. Life is a gift, and its challenges are a gift. I don’t know many people who would rather the alternative.”

“Wait, did someone change the channel? It’s starting to feel a little Lifetime for Women in here. But Cavuto’s economic cheerleading fits in perfectly with the mission of the year-old Fox Business Network, which positions itself as a friendlier, less jargon-heavy alternative to CNBC and Bloomberg Television, and unapologetically pro-business. (‘What I’ve learned about is that they are all capitalists when they negotiate their own contracts and on payday,’ Fox mastermind Roger Ailes told Fortune magazine last year. ‘Other than that, they’re suspicious of corporations, profits, capitalism and generally democracy. We tend to be enthusiastic capitalists all the time because we refuse to be phony about it.’)

“Cavuto, who is also Fox Business Network’s managing editor, keeps his lead suit packed away in the sprawling Mendham mansion he shares with wife Mary, daughter Tara, 20, and the two sons they adopted four years ago, Bradley, 7, and Jeremy, 6 (or, as he playfully calls them, ‘al Qaeda in footie pajamas.’)

“Business news was not always in his blood; born to an Irish mother and an Italian father, he attended Catholic school, and enrolled in St. Bonaventure University with plans to become a priest. He met his future wife while working on the college newspaper at St. Bonaventure University; she was a reporter, he was her copy editor.”

Read more here.