Categories: OLD Media Moves

What Jim Cramer taught me about financial journalism

James Altucher of The Altucher Confidential writes about what CNBC “Mad Money” host Jim Cramer taught him.

Here are some examples:

2)      Financial Media = Entertainment. Lets not fool ourselves. Jim is first and foremost an entertainer. If you have a TV show where you wear costumes, yell at the screen, throw chairs, and interview guests often in the hope for some laughs then I don’t think anyone would call that anything other than entertainment. Jim has said this repeatedly that he’s an entertainer. 99% of people shouldn’t be buying stocks anyway (this is my opinion) and those that do buy stocks should do their own research.  And Jim’s the best entertainer in the financial media business. Really look at his show and watch what he does. he combines education, with interviews, with six or so different voices (he takes voice lessons, or did at least, to be able to do all that he can do with his voice in a show and not go hoarse after a few days), with stock picks in different industries, call-ins, and even magic tricks (the lightning round, more on that later).

4)      Commentary belongs in Financial Journalism. Cramer changed everything when he started thestreet.com and added commentary from professional investors into the mix. The negative argument was then (and still is) that there is a conflict of interest if someone owns a stock to be then talking about it on a platform meant for serious journalism. But that’s bullshit. Who better to write about a company then someone who has serious resources and used those resources to dig under every rock and uncover as much as they can before putting hard-earned money to work. Journalism has changed over the past 15 years to accept this and move the needle even further but at the time it was a contentious issue.

Read more here.

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