Young biz journalists surprised at amount of responsibility

Young business journalists are given an incredible amount of responsibility that can move markets, a panel of recent graduates who now work on business desks said Friday.

“The first time I filed a hed and Fannie and Freddie went up 20 percent and I created $40 billion in value, that’s a wierd feeling,” said Michael Crittenden, a reporter for Dow Jones Newswires in its Washington bureau.

Crittenden, Bloomberg News reporter Amy Thomson and New York Times business desk copy editor Nirav Vora spoke on a panel at the “Getting Started in Business News” conference in New York on Friday. More than 40 college students interested in business journalism attended, as well as recruiters from the major business media outlets.

Thomson recounted a similar experience about a story that she wrote about Microsoft and Yahoo that sent Yahoo’s stock up dramatically.

Vora urged the students to get a broad experience while in college outside of their journalism classes. “And business is one of those areas,” said Vora.