The fight against bafflegab

Pamela Yellen of The Huffington Post writes about Sylvia Porter, one of the pioneers of personal finance journalism who wrote a syndicated column for decades.

Yellen writes, “At first, as a 22-year-old financial news freelancer for the New York Evening Post in 1935, Porter was required to use the byline ‘S.F. Porter’ to mask the fact that she was a woman. But Porter’s crusading reporting, fighting for the common person and exposing financial graft, earned her a growing and loyal audience. Still ‘bearded’ as ‘S.F. Porter’ in 1938, she was made the newspaper’s financial editor and began writing a daily column.

“It took until July 1942 for the Post to finally realize that Porter’s gender might actually be an asset. It was then that the paper allowed her to write as ‘Sylvia F. Porter’ and began running her photo. Five years later, her articles became nationally syndicated and her influence and readership multiplied many times over.

“Porter, who died of emphysema just shy of her 78^th birthday, spent more than a half-century advocating for financial literacy and was a firm believer that individuals can — and should — take control of their money, savings and investments. ‘I like to think I’ve contributed in some way to the increasing willingness of the American public to take on the responsibilities of the economy,’ she once said in reflecting on her accomplishments.

“Among Porter’s enduring philosophies is that education is one of the best possible personal investments; that individuals should dismiss theoretical comparisons to ‘average’ investors, since there is no such thing; and that money is more than coins and bills — it ‘can be translated into the beauty of living, a support in misfortune, an education, or future security.'”

Read more here. Porter is the only business journalist ever to appear on the cover of a mainstream magazine.