ESPN’s Kimes talks about her early career in business journalism

Mina Kimes of ESPN talked with “Full Disclosure” host Roben Farzad about her career, including stints at Bloomberg News and Fortune.

At Fortune, she covered markets during the financial crisis. Her first investigative story at Fortune was on Johnson & Johnson. Her story “Bad to the Bone” exposed a company that used cement to repair bone issues and won a Henry Luce Award.

“Mu business education came from Fortune,” said Kimes. “It was on the job. I don’t think I took a single math class. It was a lot of studying.”

“I just read The Wall Street Journal for an hour every day, and if I didn’t understand it, I would look it up,” said Kimes, who joined Fortune after Time Inc. shut Fortune Small Business.

“I thought I was going to be an investigative journalist and a features writer,” said Kimes, who is now an NFL reporter at ESPN.

Kimes was the first winner of the Larry Birger Young Business Journalist prize, given by SABEW. The Birger Award recognizes the nation’s top young business journalist, up to the age of 30.

Kimes was at Bloomberg News, where she wrote about hedge fund manager Eddie Lampert and his ownership of retailer Sears, before leaving for ESPN in 2014. Before that, she worked at Fortune for four and a half years and Fortune Small Business for slightly more than two years.

To listen, go 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.