Greg Morago writes Thursday for the Hartford Courant how business journalism is taken on more credence with the current economic turmoil.
Morago writes, “That transitional focus to business and financial news has shone a spotlight on media business reporters in print and broadcast. The financial talking heads, business scribes, Wall Street analysts and market-watch hacks are now media’s most visible stars, thanks to the specter of recession. Money stars like Suze Orman, Jim Cramer and Maria Bartiromo have been joined by a crop of eager faces (many of them new to mainstream news consumers), all eager to give their take on the ups and mostly downs of the global economic situation. The stock market tumble and all its repercussions have brought business news and the business reporter front and center.
“‘More than ever, the general-interest reader wants to know about business news and more than ever business news is relevant to everyone,’ said Joanne Lipman, editor in chief of Conde Nast Portfolio. ‘Business news intersects with every aspect of life and that is more true now than ever.’
“Business news now routinely pushes its way to the top of the television broadcast, to the lead story in daily newspapers and the cover story in magazines. It would surprise no one that viewership is up at Bloomberg Television and Fox Business Network or that Internet traffic for business news is soaring (Yahoo Finance, the largest finance site on the Internet, experienced its biggest weeks in viewership last month). For CNBC, the global financial crisis has been a boon. CNBC’s ‘Business Day’ and ‘Market Hours’ both had their best month ever in total viewers and were both up more than 90 percent from last October.”
Read more here.
