Fandell, former WSJ and Advertising Age journalist, dies at 79

Todd Fandell, a business journalist for The Wall Street Journal and Advertising Age, died Dec. 15 at the age of 79.

Bob Goldsborough of the Chicago Tribune writes, “In 1963, the Wall Street Journal hired Fandell as a Chicago-based reporter.

“‘He had a lovely group of mentors there. He really learned a lot at the Wall Street Journal,’ his wife said.

“The paper later transferred Fandell from its Chicago office to the paper’s St. Louis bureau, where he was bureau chief ‘for a two-person office,’ his wife said with a laugh. He then was transferred to the paper’s New York office, and he moved his family to New Jersey.

“In 1976, the Tribune’s financial editor, Alvin Nagelberg, hired Fandell as his assistant business editor, a role that involved reporting and editing stories. Nagelberg said Fandell was hired in part in the belief he could lure reporters and editors from the Wall Street Journal, which is precisely what happened over the next several years.

“‘I found him to be a very meticulous person,’ Nagelberg said. ‘He took a lot of time developing his stories, and he thought about things for a long time. And he was a very hardworking, very smart reporter who would dig into a story and find sources.'”

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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.