Categories: OLD Media Moves

Why are there so many open business journalism jobs?

Victor Epstein, a former business journalist with Bloomberg, Bond Buyer and the Des Moines Register, writes about the large number of open business journalism positions currently on Gorkana compared to other journalism jobs.

Epstein writes, “The list below represents this week’s news industry job openings on the Gorkana website. There are 43 slots, but the mix of business jobs to mainstream jobs is upside down — like most of U.S. society since global monied interests hijacked our democracy.

“Thirty eight of the 43 jobs — a staggering 88 percent — are for positions that cover industry, legal affairs or technology or exist at publications devoted to those topics. These are beats and news organizations in which ethically compromised journalists habitually trade favorable coverage for access to news and newsmakers. Jobs where the milquetoast cowards who now pass for most U.S. reporters, columnist, and editors are more likely to rewrite corporate press releases and call it news, or serve as an apologist for a chief executive officer who treats them like one of their employees.

“Only four of the jobs on this week’s list are for non-business news gigs (*) and one of those is in Britain. The fifth job is actually a contest posing as a job (+).”

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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  • While I appreciate his rage and rejection of "ethically compromised journalists", can you -- for a moment -- consider that many of those that you mock have families that need to be housed and fed? Not all of us can afford that high horse that you ride around on, and so we take on the jobs as "milquetoast cowards". Perspective is everything.

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