Categories: OLD Media Moves

The business media and Henry Blodget

David Weidner of Marketwatch wants to know why so many business news outlets are giving disgraced former Wall Street analyst Henry Blodget a chance to espouse his beliefs again.

Weidner notes that Blodget wrote in a New York Times special section on Wednesday.

Weidner wrote, “Andrew Ross Sorkin, who edited the special section, said Times editors actually had to strengthen Blodget’s original disclaimer which must have read something like ‘A few years ago, I left a successful career as a Wall Street analyst — renowned by regulators for my bullishness to spend time with less money.’

“Sorkin, who saw Blodget at a cocktail party and was inspired to ask the former analyst to write a piece, said ‘of all the people who have a unique perspective on a boom-and-bust cycle, Henry Blodget may well be at the top of your list.’

“He called Blodget’s work ‘an opportunity for readers.’ He also accurately extolled Blodget’s writing. Blodget worked as a journalist before becoming an analyst.

“It’s easy to see Sorkin’s, or any editor’s, motive in commissioning a piece from Blodget. He is famous, a good writer, smart and controversial. Critics might say he’s also a proven phony. To suggest he has some kind of unique perspective is disingenuous.”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.

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al says:
October 4, 2007 at 11:09 am
I, for one, don't care what he has to say. He made money -- a lot of it -- at the expense of other people. Sure he's entitled to a second chance. But when it comes to his opinions/view of the market, i could care less what this disgraced "former success" has to say. Every time I see his byline, i skip his piece. To me, printing Blodget is just a waste of cut-down-trees