Proliferation of business news blogs good, but they have limits

TALKING BIZ NEWS EXCLUSIVE

The expansion of business news to where there are hundreds of blogs writing about business and economics news topics overall is good, said former Wall Street Journal managing editor Paul Steiger, but these outlets do have limitations.

“There are hundreds of blogs out there that report stories that aren’t in The Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times or the [New York] Times,” said Steiger, now CEO and editor in chief of ProPublica. “The problem is that they don’t do much reporting. They do a lot of thinking.”

Steiger contends that content on business news blogs is often a one-fact story.

“They can not do what we do, which is multi-fact stories with a lot of nuance and analysis,” said Steiger, who had lunch Monday with Talking Biz News and two UNC-Chapel Hill business journalism students.

Steiger pointed to the Pulitzer Prize-winning stories from ProPublica business journalists Jacob Bernstein and Jesse Eisinger, which cost the non-profit news organization an estimated $350,000.

Bernstein and Essinger won in the national reporting category in 2011 for their exposure of questionable practices on Wall Street that “contributed to the nation’s economic meltdown, using digital tools to help explain the complex subject to lay readers,” according to the judges.

It was the first Pulitzer ever awarded to an online news organization, and the first not to appear in print. The two collaborated with public radio’s “Planet Money” and “This American Life.”

Their story showed how Wall Street banks bought mortgage-backed securities that they had generated to maintain their profits and bonuses, propping up a faltering market until it collapsed under its own weight.

“Our job is to give the public the tools to effect change,” said Steiger. “We want to put that story on the platform where it is going to have the most impact.”