Categories: OLD Media Moves

Lessons learned from a career journalist

Rocky Mountain News business editor Rob Reuteman writes Saturday about some of the things he has learned in his three-decade career as a journalist.

Here are some good ones for any business reporter:

* Some companies have corporate communications departments that facilitate the flow of information to the public. Others clearly have marching orders to build a virtual brick wall around the company and its executives. Beware of the latter.

* When you get a press release on a company’s quarterly earnings, and it doesn’t mention net income in the first sentence, it means they’ve lost money and you will have to get into the fine print to find that out.

* Sometimes a company will call and complain about things a reporter has had the nerve to ask. I repeat editor John Temple’s dictum: Report aggressively, write conservatively.Â

* Once in a great while, when I really have to lock horns with a reporter, I’ll say, “Look, I don’t walk in here every morning thinking about what a big (jerk) I can be. But if the situation calls for me to be a (jerk), I’ll be the biggest (jerk) you ever saw. You don’t want that.”

Read more here.

Recent Posts

Dynamo hires former Business Insider executive editor Harrington

Former Business Insider executive editor Rebecca Harrington has been hired by Dynamo to be its…

15 hours ago

Bloomberg TV hires Kerubo as desk producer

Bloomberg Television has hired Brenda Kerubo as a desk producer in London. She will be covering Europe's…

15 hours ago

Jittery CNBC staff reassured by new boss

In a meeting at CNBC headquarters Thursday afternoon, incoming boss Mark Lazarus presented a bullish…

15 hours ago

Making business news accessible to a wider audience

Ritika Gupta, the BBC's North American business correspondent, was interviewed by Global Woman magazine about…

16 hours ago

Rest of World hires Lo as China reporter

Rest of World has hired Kinling Lo as a China reporter. Lo was previously a…

16 hours ago

Bloomberg rises to No. 7 biz news website

Bloomberg News saw strong unique visitor growth to its website in October, passing Fox Business…

16 hours ago