The evolution of business journalism and market research

Ted Lanpher writes about the evolution of business journalism in the past 100 years and how it has affected market research.

Lanpher writes, “The heyday of the researcher arrived with Wall Street Journal and Institutional Investor’s ‘all star’ rankings and tales of multimillion analyst salaries. With the arrival of dial-up Internet, these oracles were disrupted by online ‘portals’ like Yahoo Finance, which launched in 1997, and stock market information delivered by eTrade and other retail brokers. By 2000 over a third of high-income households in the US had participated in online trading and become consumers of online business news and research.

“As broadband Internet reached the majority of households, online trading and research became the norm. In the late 90s, Motley Fool pioneered electronic discussion boards as a new mode of market research. The rise of social media later stimulated the emergence of community-driven investor sites like Seeking Alpha (2004). These sites offered insightful analyses with an emphasis on feedback and input from readers themselves.

“Over the last decade, a new media order has undermined the business models of the venerable business publications and financial cable channels alike. 100 years after its founding, Forbes has moved to an open contributor model and looks to event marketing and brand licensing to survive, while CNBC has seen a steady decline in viewership.”

Read more here.