Categories: OLD Media Moves

Why Dan Lyons left business journalism

Dan Lyons, the former tech reporter for Newsweek and Forbes, writes about why he left business journalism.

Lyons writes, “I also had grown less and less enchanted with the kind of work I was doing as a “mainstream” journalist.

“Media companies need a new way to make money — one that doesn’t depend on advertising. But so far nobody has come up with anything. That wouldn’t be so bad, if at least they were aware of this problem. The truly scary thing to me is that publishers either aren’t aware of this, or won’t admit it.

“Instead of inventing a new business model, media companies keep trying to tweak the old one. By that I mean they keep trying to invent new kinds of advertising. It’s a pointless exercise. They’re like blacksmiths who are responding to Henry Ford and his automobile by trying to create a better horseshoe.

“For a long time I didn’t want to admit how serious and profound were the challenges facing the media business. I wanted to believe, as many still do, that somehow everything will work out. Like most journalists, I get a little romantic about the news business.

“But the thing is, I’m also a business journalist. As a business journalist, I could see the disruption taking place. I could see that the entire foundation of the industry was crumbling. And I knew that when that happens, in any industry, it’s time to get out.”

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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