Nocera denies applying for WSJ job

Earlier Tuesday, Talking Biz News posted an item about New York Times business columnist Joe Nocera in which a News Corp. executive was quoted as stating that Nocera had applied for a job at The Wall Street Journal and that the reason he wrote a negative column last week about Fox Business Network was because that he had been turned down.

After discussing the situation with Nocera by telephone, Talking Biz News now believes that information to be false and has taken the item off the blog.

Specifically, Nocera denied that he had applied for a job at the Journal, and he called the information “highly inaccurate.” Talking Biz News regrets the error.

Here is Nocera’s written response to the item:

1) I am not angling for a job at the Wall Street Journal.  I had a cup of coffee with Marcus Brauchli, at his request, and told him what I tell everybody: I really like my job, and it would take one hell of an offer to pry me from the New York Times.

2) I actually like writing for the Saturday paper, which I also tell people.  It is the perfect day for the kind of column I write.  So I am not “angling for better real estate.”

3) My motives in writing about Fox Business News were quite simple: I was interested in trying to figure out what the new Fox network was all about, and sheer curiousity led me to write that column.  I also think that the column was not particularly tough, much less “poison”–I questioned its current business strategy, and said I fully expected Fox to figure out a strategy that would work better against CNBC.

4) I was stunned to discover this item after it was posted, and to realize that you had not bothered to call me about any of this before publishing.  One would think that if you are going to disparage somone’s motives and career like this, you  would at least have the courtesy to get my response to your allegations.  When we spoke on the phone just now, you claimed that blogging is somehow different, and that standards of journalism and fair play don’t apply.  I would be curious to know if that is what you teach your students.

Because of the interest in what happened, I am providing my response to Joe below:

Please understand that the blog is something that I do in my spare time – in between classes and grading papers and taking care of my kids. In the past, I have posted items on the blog, and then gotten a response from the person involved later and updated the item. The firing of a Cincinnati Enquirer reporter earlier this year is an example. I updated it after I talked to the Enquirer biz editor and got her point of view.

What happened today was that I posted that item right before going to class after talking to someone at News Corp. that in the past has been a reliable source. I had just gotten out of class when I got your phone call. I was planning on calling you when I got a chance.

What I was trying to convey to you is that there are plenty of blogs out there that post rumor, innuendo and what they hear because that’s what they are – the buzz. I consider journalism to be different than blogging in that respect. I think blogging is a new frontier in mass communication, and we’re all learning as we go.

I am not excusing or trying to explain away what happened today. It taught me to be more distrustful of certain sources, and I think the blog in the future is going to steer away from such material.