James Flanigan, whose twice-weekly column was a mainstay of business coverage at The Times for some two decades, died Aug. 19 after a brief illness at 85, reports Times business columnist Michael Hiltzik.
Hiltzik reports, “From the mid-1960s — when he was lured west from a high-level editing job at Forbes to strengthen The Times’ business and financial coverage — until 2005, Flanigan guided Times readers through a period of dizzying changes in business, market booms and crashes, bubbles and bursts, scandals and triumphs.
“‘He became an instant star in Los Angeles for both his investigative reporting and his powerful writing,’ recalled Paul E. Steiger, the former Times business editor who recruited Flanigan and later served as managing editor of the Wall Street Journal and, until 2020, executive chairman of ProPublica, the nonprofit investigative journalism organization, which he helped found in 2008.
“Steiger called Flanigan ‘an incredible talent. His was one of the greatest combinations of reporting insight, human empathy, and writing flair that I ever encountered in business and economic journalism.'”
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