Monthly Archives: May 2010
New biz journalism prize announced
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The Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis has announced the creation of the Olin Corporate Strategy Prize with $10,000 in honoraria for the best reporting on a significant shift in corporate strategy.
A distinguished panel of judges including journalists, business school scholars, strategy experts and corporate leaders will award prizes to the top three articles.
First prize will receive $5,000, while second prize will receive $3,500. A third prize story will receive $1,500.
The competition is open to professional journalists who have published a story in the past two years profiling a company that has recently undergone or is undergoing significant strategic change. Complete contest rules and requirements are available at the Olin Corporate Strategy Prize website.
A compendium of qualified articles submitted to the competition will be widely distributed to accredited business schools for use in their academic programs. Olin faculty and students envision using the articles in case competitions and case studies. The school also foresees the possibility of future collaboration between faculty and journalists to conduct expanded analysis of cases to further understanding of the complexities of strategic change.
Deadline for submissions to the competition is June 30.
Read more here.
Indiana paper moves biz news
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The Terre Haute Tribune Star newspaper in Indiana is changing where its business news coverage appears in the paper.
Editor Max Jones writes, “The Wednesday and Thursday four-section newspapers will be consolidated into two sections. Local news now in the Local & Bistate section will move to the A section. Wednesday School Zone and Thursday Health & Fitness content will be placed in the back of the A section. A second Thursday Opinion page will be created.
“The Friday newspaper will be consolidated from four sections into three sections, with a standalone arts and entertainment section as the third section. All local news will be moved into the A section.
“In the Sunday paper, the section now devoted to Local & Bistate news will become a diverse state and local business section, titled ‘Jobs & Money.’”
Read more here.
BP made workers sign contract preventing contact with media
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BP had workers sign a contract banning them from speaking to media, and then, almost three weeks later, the company took back the clause pertaining to the media in a letter to oil spill workers, according to a News21 report.
Lauren Frohne and Jessey Dearing write, “BP has made claims that it has not blocked media from covering the oil spill. But a contract that became valid May 2 suggested otherwise.
“BP required workers employed in the Vessels of Opportunity program and other programs to sign a contract. The Vessels of Opportunity contract put fishermen at risk of losing their job, which is their only form of income, if they speak with the media.
“The contract included a clause prohibiting them and their deckhands from making ‘news releases, marketing presentation, or any other public statements’ while working on the clean-up.”
Read more here.
Another new show for Fox Business
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Judge Andrew Napolitano is expected to get his own show on Fox Business Network, a source close to the situation told Talking Biz News.
An announcement is expected soon. It will be the second new show announced by the network. Earlier this week, Fox Business announced a show hosted by former CNN reporter Gerri Willis.
Napolitano joined Fox News Channel in January 1998 as a senior judicial analyst. He provides legal analysis on both Fox News and Fox Business.
Napolitano is the youngest life-tenured Superior Court judge in the history of the State of New Jersey. While on the bench from 1987 to 1995, Judge Napolitano tried more than 150 jury trials and sat in all parts of the Superior Court — criminal, civil, equity and family. He has handled thousands of sentencings, motions, hearings and divorces.
For 11 years, he served as an adjunct professor of constitutional law at Seton Hall Law School, where he provided instruction in constitutional law and jurisprudence. Judge Napolitano returned to private law practice in 1995 and began television broadcasting in the same year.
Forbes enters capital-raising business
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Dan Primack of Private Equity Hub, a Thomson Reuters operation, reports that Forbes is lending its name to a capital-raising operation.
Primack writes, “peHUB has learned that a new effort called Forbes Private Capital Group recently launched, with plans to raise third-party capital for private funds and transactions. Much of the marketing will be aimed at wealthy families and individuals – i.e., Forbes’ target market — although it also will work to raise money from institutional investors.
“The man in charge is Todd Morley, who isn’t new to this sort of thing. In 1999, he co-founded Guggenheim Partners, which now has $100 billion in assets under management. He more recently founded an investment management firm called G2 Investment Group, which is where Forbes Private Capital Group will be housed.
“‘I have a social relationship with some of the Forbes family from my time with Guggenheim, so they are very familiar with what we did over there,’ Morley says. ‘I think they saw this as a natural segue from the media business into the financial services business.’”
Read more here. There was no discussion in the article about the potential conflict of interest for Forbes reporters covering private equity.
NYT auto writer Maynard leaving paper
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New York Times auto industry writer Micheline Maynard is leaving the paper to become editor for the “Changing Gears: Remaking the Manufacturing Belt” Upper Midwest Local Journalism Center.
The Center is a new editorial collaboration funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to report on a major developing story — the transformation of the Upper Midwest’s industrial-based economy to a post-manufacturing one. This transition is a turning point in the American economy with economic, social, environmental and cultural implications.
Maynard, a Michigan native, will be based in Chicago and lead a team of three reporters and a new media producer in the production of long form radio feature reports, special programs for radio and television, and web content. The project will also seek to engage the citizens of the region in an exploration of the region’s past and future.
Maynard has been a senior business correspondent for The New York Times, where her work has appeared since 2000. She joined The Times staff in 2004 as a reporter in Business Day, covering the airline industry.
She was named Detroit bureau chief in October 2005, where she directed the Times’ coverage of the automobile industry. Maynard became a senior business correspondent in 2008, and played a key role in the paper’s coverage of the automobile industry bailout.
Read more here.
Forbes to make layoffs under new leader?
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Amy Wicks of Women’s Wear Daily reports Thursday that potential layoffs are coming to Forbes magazine under new leader Lewis Dvorkin.
Wicks writes, “It looks like another wave of layoffs is coming to Forbes. Although True/Slant founder Lewis Dvorkin doesn’t officially assume responsibility for all of Forbes’ editorial areas as chief product officer until Tuesday, insiders say he has been paying close attention to the masthead since he started consulting for the company last month. This time around, it is believed layoffs will affect the top of the masthead, which currently boasts two chief editors (William Baldwin on the print side and Paul Maidment for online), four managing editors, seven executive editors and 11 department heads. (Lucy Maher, who was the eighth executive editor and headed up the lifestyle channel, just resigned from the magazine. She is moving to Hearst Magazines Digital Media as executive director of network programming, effective June 7.) ‘He’s going to be ruthless about the cuts,’ said one insider of Dvorkin.
“It’s no news morale has been at rock bottom at Forbes, nor that the company has been hurting financially. In January, Forbes sold its lower-Fifth Avenue headquarters to New York University. Last year, the company laid off about 100 workers and auctioned off its wine collection. And things aren’t necessarily looking up. Year to date, ad pages in the magazine have declined about 22 percent, according to Media Industry Newsletter. Most of its competitors, meanwhile, have posted only single-digit declines in ad pages. And in the second half of last year, Forbes’ newsstand sales were down about 9 percent compared with the same period of 2008, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. A Forbes spokeswoman denied the speculation, saying: ‘There has been no talk of layoffs.’ Dvorkin was unavailable for comment.”
Read more here.
CNBC’s Faber talks about his new show
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Joe Pompeo of The Business Insider interviewed CNBC‘s David Faber about his new show “Strategy Session” that will begin next month.
Pompeo writes, “Faber said it was because ‘there was a desire on the part of management to recalibrate that time period.’ Simultaneously, he said, he had been interested in changing up his primary role as a reporter to do something more analysis-oriented.
“That led to a conversation with ‘Strategy Session’ creator Susan Krakower, CNBC’s senior vice president of strategic programing. They’ve been developing the show for about four months now, Faber said.
“But we also hear CNBC created ‘Strategy Session’ to seize on an opportunity to spotlight Faber’s co-host, contributing editor Gary Kaminsky, during its early afternoon roster. Kaminsky is the big shot former $13 billion managing director of Neuberger Berman, a valuable asset for a show focused on capital markets and investment decisions.”
Read more here.
CNBC's Faber talks about his new show
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Joe Pompeo of The Business Insider interviewed CNBC‘s David Faber about his new show “Strategy Session” that will begin next month.
Pompeo writes, “Faber said it was because ‘there was a desire on the part of management to recalibrate that time period.’ Simultaneously, he said, he had been interested in changing up his primary role as a reporter to do something more analysis-oriented.
“That led to a conversation with ‘Strategy Session’ creator Susan Krakower, CNBC’s senior vice president of strategic programing. They’ve been developing the show for about four months now, Faber said.
“But we also hear CNBC created ‘Strategy Session’ to seize on an opportunity to spotlight Faber’s co-host, contributing editor Gary Kaminsky, during its early afternoon roster. Kaminsky is the big shot former $13 billion managing director of Neuberger Berman, a valuable asset for a show focused on capital markets and investment decisions.”
Read more here.
The biz media have no clue about what moves markets
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Peter Cohan writes on DailyFinance.com about how the financial media seem to have no idea what moves markets.
1. Repeating analyst quotes as if they were explanations;
2. Confusing coincidence with causality;
3. Using the stock market as a forum to spout political opinions.
“Let’s examine the first dysfunction: Journalists need to write about the market’s movements because their editors ask them to. So journalists ask so-called market experts, who, in order to keep appearing to be experts, must say something other than ‘I have no idea.’ So they make up answers, which the journalists write in their articles — and that makes their editors happy.”
Read more here.