Recognizing top business journalists

Marketwatch.com media columnist Jon Friedman annoints a number of business journalists who are at the top of the game when it comes to breaking news and blogging.

Here are his selections:

Scoop-meisters: Jeff Bercovici, Keith Kelly, John Koblin

Bercovici of AOL’s Daily Finance, Kelly of the New York Post and Koblin of The New York Observer specialize in breaking news. For fun, they also infuriate PR people, fellow journalists and executives by printing stuff that the establishment wants to keep a secret. In an age when news is regarded as something of a commodity, they keep alive the vanishing art of getting exclusives.

Bloggers: Bess Levin, Andrew Ross Sorkin, Brian Stelter

Levin of Dealbreaker and the New York Times’s duo of Stelter and Sorkin are reinventing journalism with their blog posts. Levin has put a spark into the coverage of finance, daring to inject sarcasm — blasphemy! — and knock the Wall Street crowd off the pedestals that old media blowhards placed them on over the years. Levin sometimes seems to regard the Wall Streeters as little more than ill-mannered frat boys (imagine that). Sorkin has achieved must-read status with dogged reporting. Stelter, only a few years removed from Towson State in Maryland where he first reported on the television industry, has shown that age isn’t a barrier in covering a beat. A hard-working reporter — with generous access to Twitter — can compete with the veterans.

Read more here.