Eisinger: Business journalism fails to hold powerful accountable

Jesse Eisinger

Asher Schechter of the Stigler Center at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business writes about a recent symposium it held about business journalism.

Schechter writes, “During a panel at the recent Stigler Center conference on concentration in America, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jesse Eisinger offered an anecdote that spoke to the current state of business journalism.

“‘Normally on this weekend, I judge the premier business journalism award, the Loebs,’ said Eisinger. ‘This time I couldn’t, so a colleague of mine, an editor, took my place. She was doing the features that all the business and regular news organizations had submitted. She came to me and she really was kind of confused. She said, ‘This is supposed to be the best business news, the best business features of the year. And it seems like mainly what they are is [a] journalist gets access to a corporate executive and writes about what he or she is doing at the office or at home—they think that that’s a good feature.’’

“The story, suggested Eisinger, a senior reporter for ProPublica, was emblematic of the challenges facing business journalism: ‘Business journalism fails spectacularly in holding the powerful to account.'”

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.