Why Breitbart is getting into business journalism

Shelley Hepworth of the Columbia Journalism Review spoke with John Carney of The Wall Street Journal who is joining Breitbart to start a business and financial site.

Here is an excerpt:

What attracted you to the position with Breitbart, and how did it come about?

I got my start in journalism at digital startups (Gawker, Dealbreaker.com, Business Insider) so when Breitbart wanted to expand into [business coverage] I thought it was a great opportunity to get back involved in [the startup] world. I’ve loved The Wall Street Journal, and I’ve learned a lot in my time here (three years), but I have always had this very digital focus and a sort of entrepreneurial, startup energy. The opportunity to get back into that was really attractive to me.

How would you characterize Breitbart’s current economic and business coverage?

It hasn’t been a focus for them. They have done some, and they’ve concentrated on their strengths. We’re going to be informed by an optimism about the potential for the American economy and economic nationalism and populism—the idea that the American worker has gotten a raw deal and that we can get a better deal.

Could you explain the term “economic populism”?

A lot of our politics has [come to] focus on petty issues while our economy is actually rotting at the core. Many Americans have not seen their incomes improve in decades and, in fact, a large and important section of America has actually seen their fortunes decline over the years. Economic populism is an economics that sees its vision of success as improving and bettering the prospects of all Americans. It’s not enough to grow if too much of that growth is concentrated at the top, or if the middle classes are deteriorating. Economic populism is both a vision of success and an optimism that it can be done.

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