Reporting on yourself as a business

Few media publications, including business magazines and newspapers, write about themselves. When I worked at BusinessWeek, we never wrote about McGraw-Hill, our parent company. The Wall Street Journal never writes about the behind-the-scenes business stories that involve parent Dow Jones, such as the fact that its CEO and another executive at the company are married.

So I was pleasantly surprised to see that Inc. magazine devoted an in-depth article in its most-recent issue about the sale of the magazine to a new owner. The article provides lots of details that haven’t been disclosed anywhere else, so it’s obvious that the new owner gave the editors and reporters a free pass to write about what they thought was important.

When business publications can cover themselves as a business with objectivity, then the business publication gains more credence and respect from the business world.

Read the Inc. piece here.