Former New York Times deputy business editor Peter Lattman, who recently left to join the Emerson Collective, spoke with Josh Block of the Bloomberg “Big Law Business” blog about how he made the transition from an attorney to a business journalist.
Lattman worked for two years as an attorney and then five years at Goldman Sachs & Co. before entering business journalism.
“It both helped and hurt me as a journalist,” said Lattman about his nonjournalism jobs. “I knew how to speak the language of these men and women who worked as lawyers and bankers. And all of this stuff came naturally to me. And a lot of reporting is gaining people’s trust.”
Lattman helped start the Law Blog at the Wall Street Journal in 2006. He recounted working with business journalists Bill Grueskin and Ashby Jones at the Journal, and the blog was read by lawyers across the country. He called working on the blog “maybe the most fulfilling two years I had as a journalist.”
[contextly_sidebar id=”0jHnhaibNtM569CjZeRmP0kWjPSFDTBJ”]”I didn’t take myself too seriously, and I didn’t take the law too seriously,” said Lattman.
Although he worked at Goldman Sachs, Lattman said other journalists such as Susanne Craig had better sources at the Wall Street firm than he did.
“Just because I worked there, that didn’t give me an edge,” he said.
Lattman joined the Times in 2010 and became its media editor and then became the No. 2 editor on the business desk in 2014. His new job is at the Emerson Collective, a philanthropic organization created by Steve Jobs’ widow, Laurene Powell Jobs.
“It’s tough to the leave the Times,” said Lattman. “I had made a decision that I wasn’t going to practice journalism as a craft anywhere else. I saw this as an amazing opportunity.”
To listen to the podcast, go here.
