Martin Howell of Reuters reports Wednesday that Securities and Exchange Commission chairwoman Mary Schapiro has a job for some of the investigative journalists who have recently been laid off.
Schapiro is also worried about the decline in investigative business reporting and what they might mean in terms of tips to the regulatory agency.
Howell writes, “‘It’s an absolute worry for me because I think financial journalists have in many cases been the sources of some really important enforcement cases and really important discovery of practices and products that regulators should be profoundly concerned about,’ the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission told the Reuters Global Financial Regulation Summit in Washington on Tuesday.
“‘But for journalists having been dogged and determined and really pursuing some of these things, they might not be known to the regulators or they might not be known for a long time,’ she said.”
Later, Howell quoted Schapiro as saying: “Investigative journalism actually would be a pretty interesting skill set for us to have. We’ve talked about financial analysis, we’ve talked about forensic accounting being skill sets that we really need — understanding of complex trading, strategies and systems, but it’s one of the things the SEC has to do. It has to really broaden its horizons and bring in people who think about things a little differently than it has historically.”
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