The marriage between business and political coverage

Ken Dunek of Jersey Man Magazine interviewed Fox Business Network anchor Neil Cavuto about his career and the current presidential race.

Here is an excerpt:

JM: How have you managed to pull off the crossover of being a business guy in news and politics?

NC: I think in all honesty we are blessed in that they are all married today. There was a time when there was a money section in the newspaper and a business section and the world was compartmentalized. It changed a lot in the early ‘80’s with Reagan…the markets were beginning to boom, tax rates were coming down and there was a great democratization of business news. And suddenly these issues intertwined with general news. When I joined Fox, Roger Ailes asked me how I would do business news there, and I told him I wouldn’t differentiate. That’s why I try to avoid acronyms and jargon like price earning multiples and cash dividend yields and derivative swaps. I’ll still talk about them. But I’m a believer that once you explain it to people, they are very smart and will pick up on it. Use the Wall Street Journal as an example. If you noticed even with the most sophisticated stories on the meltdown that we had four years ago, they would always explain what a dividend yield is up to. Their savvy readers know that, but they are still going to read the rest of the story.

But they are also roping in the not-so-market savvy readers.

I don’t think you are “dumbing down” by doing that. You are inviting more people in. So I would always look at it as just make it part of the regular news world and don’t differentiate. I think we are succeeding at Fox Business…we try to give you the big picture and let you discern from that.

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