Categories: OLD Media Moves

Maven: Where is history in Case story?

TheStreet.com’s Marek Fuchs, who goes by the moniker Business Press Maven, wants to know why BusinessWeek’s recent story on former AOL chief Steve Case ignored his past history.

Fuchs wrote, “The excitable boys and girls at Business Week ran with this headline: ‘Steve Case Takes on the Credit Card Giants: His new GratisCard slashes fees via net-based transactions. But can he wrest market share from the like of Citigroup, JP Morgan and Bank of America?’

“You hear that? Steve Case is taking on! He’s wresting! (That’s not resting, mind you, but wresting!) If financial firms are not killed off by the subprime exposure they don’t have much of, Case will do the trick.

“Where have I heard this before?

“Oh yeah, with Case’s move to remake health care, mentioned in a quick and vapid sentence in the Business Week story. At the time of the announcement, that move was greeted with headlines about him taking on and wresting (not resting) all sorts of things from the health care companies.”

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.