Business news in the Internet age

Nikki Usher, a George Washington University journalism professor, recently defended her PhD dissertation, which examined how business news is created in the Internet age, at the University of Southern California. For her dissertation, she spent some time with the staff of the New York Times business section to see what they do each day.

Here is an excerpt:

Some business journalists are specialized journalists who are trained, or at least self-trained, to read complicated financial statements. They spend their days covering the ins and outs of the financial market beyond just the daily reports, as subjects as worth of investigation as politics. I have not charted the rise of this type of reporting, but journalists at The Times in the post-financial collapse found ways to uncover banking scandals and make people aware of the way that Wall Street always seemed to have the upper hand: the ―House Advantage, as one series dubbed it.

Other business journalists saw their roles as folding into a much larger definition of business journalism, one created by the institution. These journalists do not cover capital markets, banks, or the economy; but they cover subjects that are nonetheless integral to the functioning of American business. Their work extends to coverage of major industries and major sectors of the economy. The rise and fall of some of these industries is fascinating; in the 1970s, the newspaper had about four labor reporters. Now it has only one. Manufacturing and chemical industries was one of the most important beats. Now only autos are covered as a major manufacturing sector. Instead, the focus has grown to encompass technology and international business; the rise of health, energy, and the environment; and the growth of government and economic policy coverage. The changes in this coverage could be a story unto themselves.

At a time when the economy was going through so much transformation and change, particularly thanks to the global crisis, where was the human face of this Great Recession? Behind all the numbers and the trends, the problems with Wall Street received more attention in the newsroom than the problems of everyday people. Big, sweeping features would focus on the takeaways of the new economy, such as ―The New Poor, and the housing stories were often personalized stories about people going through the economic crisis.

But the conversations I detail and heard throughout my time in the newsroom reflect very little about the human toll of the recession. The big picture comes out of the business desk, and perhaps left to the national desk or elsewhere in the newspaper, a picture of people going through this time was remained to be covered. The business desk cared about consumer affairs and personal finance, as well as financial regulation, but the window into the agony of the people facing the crisis was not an everyday concern of the business desk.

In part, the absence of these stories may reflect the fact that news is often event-driven. As you may recall, Peter Goodman needed to have two leads for his story in the ―New Poor series, one that had a ―hard news‖ approach and another that had a ―feature‖ approach. The question regarding writing about the human face of the recession on a regular basis may have been a difficult one for journalists: How do you make regular news out of something that is so consistent that it has no daily event tied to it? The features brought these stories to the newspaper, but perhaps there could have been more discussion on the business desk.

Business news at The Times was more than just event-driven, however. The Times responded to more than just daily developments happening to say, financial reform, or daily earnings and financial information. The business news conversations reveal journalists also stepping outside the event-centered approach to news and instead thinking about the bigger picture. Often these larger enterprise stories tied back to companies, but this was, of course, the business section. These company stories were not about company performance, but often about how a company was either bilking the government or harming consumers. Larger stories about the economy attempted to break through the daily numbers and provide a bigger picture.