Monthly Archives: October 2007
Crain's New York AME is gone
by Chris Roush
Carmen Fleetwood, who joined Crain’s New York Business six months ago as an assistant managing editor, left the weekly newspaper this week, editor Greg David confirmed Wednesday evening. David said she left for personal reasons.
At Crain’s, Fleetwood had edited special sections and worked with staff reporters on stories for the web and print editions. She also edited Crain’s Health Pulse. David said her work will be taken over by Elizabeth MacBride, who will be a contributing editor and work primarily from her home outside Washington.
Before joining Crain’s, Fleetwood had been an assistant managing editor at Dow Jones Newswires. She was also a preliminary judge for the 20006 Gerald Loeb Awards.
She previously served as an assistant news editor and a reporter covering the Internet and computer hardware companies. Prior to Dow Jones, she worked at the Associated Press in the Trenton bureau and started as an editorial assistant in the sports department. Fleetwood graduated from Boston College with a BA in political science.
Meanwhile, David says he began looking this week for an editor to replace him as he moves to the position of editorial director. He hopes to have a replacement by early next year.
CNBC receives most biz Emmy nominations
by Chris Roush
CNBC received eight nominations — the most of any media outlet — for the Fifth Annual Emmy Awards for Business & Financial Reporting, the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences announced Wednesday.
In addition, Matthew Winkler, editor-in-chief of Bloomberg News, will receive this year’s Lifetime Achievement Award in Business & Financial Reporting.
The Emmy Awards for Business & Financial Reporting recognize outstanding achievement in business & financial reporting telecast or webcast from July 1, 2006 thru June 30, 2007. Nominations in seven categories were announced Wednesday.
CBS had seven nominations, followed by PBS with six nominations. They were followed by CNN with three nominations, NBC with two nominations and Bloomberg TV with one nomination.
“This year’s Business and Financial Emmy entries focused on a wide range of important economic stories,” said Peter Price, president/CEO, National Television Academy, “including the subprime mortgage meltdown, the plight of un-insured and underinsured Americans, and the looming fiscal crisis resulting from unsustainable levels of federal spending. This is our fifth year honoring outstanding economic reporting, and this year’s nominees represent the best of an important body of work.”
The winners will be named at a luncheon on Dec. 4.
Read more here.
AP launches Money & Markets for weekend biz sections
by Chris Roush
The Associated Press is launching AP Money & Markets Extra, a modular, customizable business and markets reporting service geared to weekend editions of business section.
Money & Markets Extra brings a personal investment approach to markets information. Newspapers can choose from more than 30 modules that “snap” together to build full or partial pages, or embed in local content anywhere in business or other sections. The modules combine business reporting, graphics and data that help readers put daily market changes in longer-term context. An Insider Q&A offers a short interview with a top financial insider; Fund Focus introduces investors each week to a mutual fund with an outstanding performance.
“Money & Markets has added so much more value to our section,” said Clytie Bunyan, business editor at The Oklahoman in Oklahoma City. “It provides readers with information that’s more usable than just a page of numbers.”
“Extra,” debuting Nov. 1, is the latest enhancement to AP Money & Markets, a service launched in October 2006 to provide online and print audiences with news and analytic tools to understand financial markets and other consumer financial data.
The service is designed to help newspapers update their financial data presentations with more valuable, space-conserving contextual modules that give readers more forward-looking information. It also helps newspapers provide highly local financial information without local production time, offering information that is cumbersome to find elsewhere on the Web or in print.
More than 20 print modules in the daily Money & Markets suite offer forward-looking context along with market information, and complementary online modules allow readers to get fast updates throughout the day.
“AP Money & Markets brings a fresh look and thinking to the changing world of financial information,” said AP business editor Kevin Noblet. “With more readers going online for information, our innovative service tells readers what they need to know quickly, with an attractive, compact mix of data, text and graphics.â€?
Worried about the quality of business journalism?
by Chris Roush
Renita Jablonski, a producer for American Public Media’s “Marketplace”; Indira Kannan, U.S. bureau chief for CNBC-TV18 and CNN-IBN in India; Richard Perez-Pena, a reporter with The New York Times; and David Barroux, U.S. bureau chief for French business daily Les Echos, spoke recently at the University of Pennsylvania about how business journalism is changing.
Here is an excerpt:
Penn: Should we be concerned about the quality of business news these days?
Jablonski: Maybe we could start with the new Fox channel. Prior to that becoming more publicized, you were seeing the subtle changes in its main competition — the flashier graphics, and maybe a pace that was slightly different. I think that Rupert Murdoch and company recently revealed that, in fact, they are going to be aiming more for the consumer. While there are more options [for consumers], you need to be really educated about what each outlet is providing you, the background of the company and its affiliation side. I find that the way they are trying to position themselves differently is really interesting from the get-go.
Kannan: I’ll talk from the perspective of what CNBC does in India. It is a 24-hour channel in English, but we also have the Indian-language counterpart in Hindi, which is called CNBC Awaaz. They do address different audiences. CNBC-TV18, which is the English-language channel, looks very aggressively at an urban, upwardly mobile, up-market kind of an audience, whereas CNBC Awaaz probably has been doing what Fox Business News now says it will do — it’s targeted more towards Main Street rather than Wall Street. CNBC Awaaz is really directed at a whole lot of retail investors, people in small towns — maybe even housewives who are sitting at home, who want to get into investing and do a lot of day trading. So, in India, we already have these two very distinct segments which are being served by both channels.
Perez-Pena: Obviously, there are more sources of information than ever. It has been a proliferation especially on the web, and at the same time the traditional media have fewer and fewer resources to work with. I think while there is a democratization of information, and more people have access to more information, there also has been a fragmenting of the audience, so there is a lot of information that doesn’t reach certain people. And while the universe may be wider, it is not necessarily deeper, because the resources to do really in-depth work — investigative work — are harder and harder to find, which is what Paul Steiger’s new venture is intended to address. So it is changing, and I think in some ways for the better and some ways for the worse.
Read more here.
Fortune to launch in India; other markets to follow
by Chris Roush
Meg Tirrell of Bloomberg News writes about Fortune‘s launch of an edition in India next year and notes that other editions are likely to follow.
Tirrell wrote, “Fortune is seeking readers and advertisers overseas to offset falling advertising revenue in the U.S. The magazine’s ad sales dropped 12 percent in the first nine months of the year after declining 3.8 percent in 2006, according to data from the Publishers Information Bureau.
“For the Indian edition, Fortune partnered with ABP Pvt., an Indian newspaper and magazine publisher and owner of three television news channels. Financial terms of the agreement weren’t disclosed.
“Fortune plans to start more local editions after next year, Perissi said, declining to be specific.”
Read more here.Â
Wired editor in e-mail hell
by Chris Roush
Chris Anderson, the editor of Wired magazine, posts on his Long Tail blog a list of e-mail addresses from public relations people that he has now blocked as spam because they continue to send him information he’s not interested in.
Anderson wrote, “Lazy flacks send press releases to the Editor in Chief of Wired because 
they can’t be bothered to find out who on my staff, if anyone, might actually be interested in what they’re pitching. Fact: I am an actual person, not a team assigned to read press releases and distribute them to the right editors and writers (that’s editor@wired.com).
“So fair warning: I only want two kinds of email: those from people I know, and those from people who have taken the time to find out what I’m interested in and composed a note meant to appeal to that (I love those emails; indeed, that’s why my email address is public).
“Everything else gets banned on first abuse. The following is just the last month’s list of people and companies who have been added to my Outlook blocked list. All of them have sent me something inappropriate at some point in the past 30 days. Many of them sent press releases; others just added me to a distribution list without asking. If their address gets harvested by spammers by being published here, so be it–turnabout is fair play.”
Read more here. He’s getting criticized by PR people for publishing the e-mail addresses because they will be picked up by others and spammed.
Oregon Business publisher resigns
by Chris Roush
Gillian Floren, the publisher of Oregon Business magazine, has resigned, according to a short story on the Portland Business Journal web site.
The short story stated, “Floren, who has been at the magazine for 10 years, first as editor, then publisher, gave no reason for her resignation.
“She said she will announce in a couple of weeks her plans for the future. No successor has been announced.
“Oregon Business, founded in 1981, is a statewide business news monthly magazine owned by Portland-based Mediamerica Inc.”
Read more here.Â
Portfolio wants shelf life
by Chris Roush
Keith Girard of The Washington Post writes Wednesday about a conversation with Conde Nast Portfolio publisher David Carey, who told him that the new business magazine wants its content to have a long shelf life.
Girard wrote, “As for the editorial, articles for the most part were written with shelf life in 
mind. They can be read now or a month from now and still have relevance and value, he says. Of course, the content has drawn the most scrutiny of all. From the hiring of Lippman, who had no previous magazine experience, to her hiring of a high-powered staff (and the subsequent defections of some), to the less than overwhelming impact of the first issue’s articles, critics have had a field day.
“Some said subjects received fawning treatment, and they quickly branded Portfolio the Vanity Fair of business magazines. Still others chronicled Lippman’s seemingly unending intramural sparring with staff members and her supposed lack of magazine savvy.
“‘People overthought the first issue,’ Carey says. ‘They thought it would be the same for the next 100 years.’ But he says the four-month gap until the publication of the second issue was not without purpose. During that time, Condé Nast engaged in a barrage of marketing surveys.”
Read more here.
Slate planning business news site
by Chris Roush
John Kublin of The New York Observer writes Wednesday that Slate is planning to launch a business news and opinion web site and has asked Dealbreaker.com founder Elizabeth Spiers and Newsweek business columnist Daniel Gross to write for it.
Kublin wrote, “Slate deputy editor David Plotz told The Observer he believes there’s a clear opening for Slate’s distinctive editorial voice. He argued that while political journalism has diversified with the arrival of blogs and other independent sites, business journalism is ‘still dominated by the big brands. We think there’s an opening for a really smart, analytical, opinionated Web site that could be Webby and fast and agile.’
“Mr. Plotz cautioned that the new project is still awaiting final authorization from Post company executives. Assuming it goes forward, it will likely capitalize on the Slate brand with a logo at the top of the home page. He would not comment on the projected budget for the site.
“According to a source at Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, the publishers of Slate, the new site, which does not yet have a name, could go live as early as next summer. It was born in part out of the recent launch of Slate’s newly branded video Web site, SlateV, which Post executives are pleased with. Plans call for it to follow the same basic staffing model that has helped make Slate a success—using a few editors and assistants to run the operation, while relying for content mostly on freelancers.”
Read more here.
Murdoch's brand of biz journalism
by Chris Roush
Peter Hart, the activism coordinator of Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting, writes in the Seattle Times that the new Fox Business Network is practicing News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch‘s brand of journalism.
“That would be the same Neil Cavuto who quipped during the 2004 presidential campaign that Osama bin Laden might be wearing a Kerry/Edwards button, and called New York Times columnist and well-respected Princeton economist Paul Krugman a ‘sanctimonious twit’ before adding, ‘Now may I suggest you take your column and shove it?’
“The partisan spin Cavuto can be expected to give to FBN’s coverage is illustrated by his claim on Fox News Channel that 2004 Democratic nominee John Kerry’s naming John Edwards as his running mate caused an ‘Edwards Dip’ in the stock market. Similarly, a Fox contributor claimed during the campaign that ‘as Kerry’s numbers increase, the market seems to go down on almost a one-for-one correlation.’
“But pandering to the right didn’t stop Fox News Channel from being a ratings success — at least in the relatively small pond of cable news — and with business viewers being an even smaller and arguably more conservative-leaning group, FBN could be a similar winner in its niche. This could tempt CNBC to try what CNN and MSNBC did when Fox began to hit them in the Nielsens — move to the right in a pathetic attempt to outfox Fox.”
Read more here.