Categories: OLD Media Moves

The Kovacevich test of business journalism

Aaron Elstein

Aaron Elstein, a senior reporter at Crain’s New York Business, writes about what makes news for his publication.

Elstein writes, “But boss, I pleaded, the story is about a banking executive who is opening branches in supermarkets all over the South. Folks who could never make a withdrawal or deposit a check at Piggly Wiggly can now do it!

“My editor nodded. I could see I was winning him over and was about to close the deal when he said: ‘Does the story pass the Kovacevich test?’

“Richard Kovacevich was my editor’s favorite businessman, because he’d left a job with Citibank in New York to go run a Minneapolis bank, where he was so successful that he merged the institution with Wells Fargo and took over what was then the best name in banking.

“If you could make a plausible case that your story was something that Kovacevich would probably want to read, it got the green light.”

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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