Categories: OLD Media Moves

CNN is tilting its biz news coverage toward tech

CNN is launching a new business website and expanding its technology coverage, part of a broader restructuring of the network’s digital operation after it missed financial targets last year, reports Gerry Smith of Bloomberg News.

Smith writes, “Starting this fall, CNN will group its business websites — CNN Money, CNN Tech and CNN Media — under the new brand CNN Business. The cable news network, now owned by phone giant AT&T Inc., will also hire about six journalists to cover technology from a new bureau in San Francisco, focusing on Silicon Valley giants like Apple, Facebook, Google, Netflix and Uber — and the impact they have on businesses and people.

“‘We want to be a site that explains how this change is affecting every person’s life and every single company around the world,’ said Jason Farkas, the veteran producer who will lead CNN Business.

The changes are among the first at CNN since AT&T acquired network parent Time Warner Inc. last month for $85.4 billion. CNN also plans a new streaming video service aimed at business and technology, which dovetails with AT&T’s interest in mobile video. ‘Markets Now,’ a weekly online show about financial markets currently hosted by Richard Quest, will be among the first shows to appear on the video service, Farkas said.”

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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.