When you write about money, you get to write about anything

Jason Fagone of the Kill Fee podcast interviewed business journalist Karen K. Ho about her career.

“If you want to write about money, you get to write about anything,” said Ho. “And I would never be bored and run out of things to write about. And I knew that there weren’t a lot of young people under 25 that were actively interested in business journalism.”

Her business journalism included covering the oil industry in Yellowknife, Canada, where she wrote and managed the business and labor section of three weekly newspapers: Yellowknifer, as well as the two versions of News/North covering the Northwest Territories and Nunavut.

“I was working at a television station at the time, and was fairly miserable,” said Ho about moving to the Northwest Territories, where it is 35 below zero for three months out of the year. “And I really wanted to write and report.”

Ho previously worked in public relations as well, and had completed a Canadian securities course before her first job in business journalism, at the Financial Post.

Ho became a business journalist after taking a seminar on how to read financial statements and find stories.

“I got the bug within an hour,” said Ho. “I was like, this is really fascinating. The idea that you could look at a sheet of what seemed like random numbers and figure out looking at things like inventory and accounts receivable and find stories — when you can look at the Matrix and see things.”

Ho recently completed a master’s program at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and is the incoming Delacorte Fellow at Columbia Journalism Review.

To listen, go here.