Flanigan, longtime LA Times biz columnist, dies at 85

James Flanigan

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.'”

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.

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Tracy Williams says:
August 23, 2021 at 12:32 pm
Jim Flanigan was among the most optimistic and fun-loving reporters even while covering the dot com boom and bust. He was an enthusiastic chronicler of businesses in Southern California always maintaining a childlike wonder of the diversity of businesses that started in LA and what first-generation immigrants accomplished. He was proudly Irish, and let's always remember that shock of salt and pepper hair and gnatty blazer with an ever-present smile and curiosity about others.