Monthly Archives: September 2010
AP biz desk hires three reporters, names money & markets editor
by Chris Roush
TALKING BIZ NEWS EXCLUSIVE
Associated Press business editor Hal Ritter sent out the following announcement to the staff on Thursday afternoon:
Joyce Rosenberg becomes Money & Markets editor. Joyce has been filling in as M&M editor the past six weeks and has decided she wants to do the job permanently as much as we want her to. Joyce’s move to the Upper East Side of the newsroom is a great move for us for a lot of reasons. Among them: Her financial knowledge, editing skills and energy will provide a big boost to the M&M staff. Joyce’s knowledge of you and how Business News operates will enable her to work the newsroom and get everyone working for M&M, as appropriate. That’s an M&M goal we’ve fallen short of achieving. Joyce’s move also will aid efforts to have the financial markets, personal finance and M&M teams work together more.
For newcomers who don’t know Joyce well, she has been with the AP for 33 years, and in Business News for 24. She has covered retailing, mergers and markets as a reporter. She has been a supervisor and manager for more than 15 years. She also writes Small Talk, the AP’s small business column. Her bachelor’s degree from Baruch College is in journalism, and she has a law degree from Brooklyn Law School. She also is a New York State-licensed psychoanalyst. And, for those who somehow don’t know this, she has three Siamese cats.
The M&M editor posting has been changed to financial markets editor and a search begun. If you think you know someone with the experience and skills to lead the markets team, please let us know.
Paul Wiseman joins us as an economics reporter in Washington. Paul comes from USA Today where he is the newspaper’s lead reporter covering the U.S. economy. Paul joined the newspaper in 1990 as a reporter in the Money section. His first eight years, he was mostly a financial markets and economics reporter, although he spent two years as autos editor. In 1998, he moved to the newspaper’s Hong Kong bureau to report business, financial and economic stories across Asia. After Sept. 11, Paul began regular rotations from Hong Kong to Afghanistan and Iraq to cover those wars. He returned to the U.S. last year.
Before joining USA Today, Paul worked for Gannett newspapers in Guam, Indiana and New Jersey. He has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Indiana University.
Paul’s addition to the economy team will help us continue to elevate our coverage of the biggest story of our careers. After two years of financial meltdown and Great Recession, this story only gets bigger — and better to cover. Paul starts Oct. 18.
Sharon Carty joins us as an autos writer in Detroit. Sharon has been covering the auto industry since 2002. She has been at USA Today since 2004 and is the newspaper’s lead reporter on U.S. automakers. She also is a regular contributor to the newspaper’s popular Drive On blog. Sharon started covering the industry while at Dow Jones Newswires, which she joined as a copy editor in 2001. Before Dow Jones, she worked at Gannett’s Courier News/Home News Tribune newspapers in central New Jersey. She started her career at The Staten Island Advance.
Sharon was a double major in journalism and political science at Rutgers University and has participated in journalism fellowship programs in South Korea and India.
Sharon’s addition to our autos team will allow us to ramp up coverage even more of a global industry undergoing sweeping change. We want more reader-focused stories aimed at car buyers, investors and anyone who loves a good business story. Sharon starts Oct. 18.
Dana Wollman joins the technology team as a spot news reporter. Dana has worked at Laptop magazine since 2007. She has written extensively about the consumer technology industry, and her duties have included a monthly column on emerging technologies. She has written many product reviews – experience that will enhance an AP franchise. She also has been a regular contributor on technology trends to AOL’s popular women’s blog, Lemondrop.com.
Dana has a bachelor’s degree in English from Wesleyan University. She starts Oct. 19.
Bloomberg introduces Android app
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Bloomberg L.P. released Thursday a new Android application that included news and stock home screen widgets. It’s free.
It is the first business and finance app for Android that allows users to read stories while off-line.
“Bloomberg uniquely harnesses technology to combine data, news and information into integrated tools that are relevant for our users,” said Oke Okaro, global head of Bloomberg Mobile, in a statement. “We’ve made significant developments in creating rich, personalized experiences on mobile, and we’re working on some incredible applications that will leverage Bloomberg’s core strengths as a multimedia and technology company.”
Bloomberg’s apps include interactive charts that enable users to drill down on information that’s personally relevant for them. For example, starting with the 52-week stock chart that appears on the stock’s summary page, users can tap a stock chart to see it in full-screen mode — where they can also see details for the open, close, high, or low for a time period ranging from five years ago to the current day.
The app provides news related to particular stocks, and users can create personalized views of the news by industry, region, exclusivity or popularity.
Bloomberg also has an app for subscribers to the Bloomberg Anywhere service that enables them to tap into the tens of thousands of terminal functions on the go.
Businessweek executive editor expected to become NYT mag editor
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Hugo Lindgren, the executive editor of Bloomberg Businessweek, is expected to be named the next editor of the New York Times Magazine, reports John Koblin of the New York Observer.
Koblin writes, “Mr. Lindgren spent the last seven months as the executive editor at Bloomberg Businessweek. Prior to Businessweek, Mr. Lindgren was the editorial director at New York Magazine and an editor at The Times Magazine where he helped create ‘The Way We Live Now’ section.
“All summer, Times sources said that New Yorker Features editor Daniel Zalewski was the top candidate to get the job. As The Observer reported on Tuesday night, Mr. Zalewski recently turned that job down, and it was expected that executive editor Bill Keller would hire from within the Times newsroom. But, as when The Times made the surprising 11th-hour announcement that they had poached Sally Singer from Vogue for T, the top job at the Times Magazine will now go to someone that was on almost no one’s short list during the three-month search process.
“With Mr. Lindgren’s hiring, an intriguing rivarly suddenly emerges between the Times Magazine and New York. Mr. Lindgren was hired twice by New York editor and former Times Magazine editor Adam Moss. Toward the end of Mr. Lindgren’s most recent stint at New York, the relationship between the two became increasingly complicated and tense, sources said, and that was a reason, in part, that Mr. Lindgren found a new job.”
Read more here.
From copy machines to top business journalist
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Alex Schiff of Benzinga interviewed New York Times financial reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin, who writes a weekly column and also oversees its popular Dealbook blog.
Here is an excerpt:
Now it’s no hiding the fact that you’re one of the youngest people around cited as an authority on Wall Street, economics, etc and that’s in a leadership position of such a major media outlet. Could you talk a little about that rapid ascension and what you think brought you to where you are today?
I started here when I was 18 years old as an intern if you will, and I used to Xerox and staple. I had no intention of putting two words together, let alone a sentence. I got lucky very early on; an editor who didn’t know how old I was assigned me a story to write, and didn’t realize I was still in high school.
I’ve been doing this now for way over a decade, and when I graduated from school, I moved over to London, and the New York Times gave me a job out there where I covered mergers and acquisitions. This was during the M&A bubble around 1999, so it was really a trial by fire and a remarkable education. I moved back to the states in 2001, and one of the first things I did when I got back here was to start this thing called Dealbook, which was this email I used to send at 7 AM. I’d send it out to bankers, CEOs, hedge fund managers, and it really just grew. In the first year we had 30,000 readers, then 80,000, to over 200,000 getting the email every morning. Now we have the website, which gets over 2+ million people on it. It’s been a remarkable little ride over the past few years.
Read more here.
Missouri paper revamps Sunday biz section
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The Springfield News-Leader in Missouri is updating its Sunday business section, writes executive editor David Stoeffler.
Stoeffler writes, “You’ll notice a major shift toward emphasizing local business and consumer news, including a regular column from business writer Wes Johnson. We’ll have news and feature stories about Ozarks businesses, plus a rotating series of economic statistics in our Ozarks Economic Snapshot. This week, we focus on tourism-related statistics, but in coming weeks, we’ll look at unemployment, auto sales and residential and commercial real estate trends.
“We’ll continue to emphasize local names and faces in our New Business Update, plus Awards & Achievers. And you’ll still find regular columns like Dean Asby’s Tech Talk and David Burton’s Agriculture in the Ozarks.
“We’ll also continue our roundup of local rates for certificates of deposit and consumer loans. However, due to space limitations and the widespread availability of this type of information, we’re discontinuing the Sunday stocks and markets pages. You can find all of the latest index averages, individual stock quotes, updated market news and more with the News-Leader.com Stock Market Tracker at www.news-leader.com/stocks.”
Read more here.
Pittsburgh paper to add law coverage to business section
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The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette said Wednesday that it will launch a new print and online weekly legal news section in partnership with The Legal Intelligencer, the nation’s oldest daily legal newspaper.
An Associated Press story states, “The section, which debuts Monday, will feature bylined news and analysis from both papers, and run in the Post-Gazette’s business section. Coverage will focus on state and regional legal news of interest to business readers. Ads for the print and online versions will be sold by both organizations.
“Three out of four legal professionals in Allegheny County read the Post-Gazette in print or online each week and the section should be of interest to them, said the paper’s president, Christopher Chamberlain.
“The Post-Gazette is owned by privately held Block Communications Inc., which owns newspapers and television stations in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Idaho, Illinois and Kentucky.”
Read more here.
WSJ shuffles beats in DC bureau
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Dow Jones Newswires financial regulation reporter Victoria McGrane will be joining the Wall Street Journal’s Washington bureau in October to augment its coverage of financial regulation, according to a memo distributed Wednesday by bureau chief John Bussey.
McGrane will work closely with Journal staff writers Deborah Solomon and Damian Paletta who are taking on new beats in Washington.
Solomon will be the paper’s point reporter on the new regulatory and business landscape brought on by passage of the Dodd-Frank Act, and on the myriad ways Washington is trying to change high finance. Paletta will be the new economic-policy reporter, covering all things Treasury.
McGrane covered Congress, the financial services industry, the 2008 presidential campaign, and the financial crisis for Politico from 2007 to earlier this year, and was the economics and finance reporter for Congressional Quarterly from 2006 to 2007. She was a staff reporter for the Keene Sentinel in Keene, N.H. from 2002 to 2004.
She graduated from Dartmouth College in 2002 with a degree in history, and earned a Masters from the London School of Economics in 2005.
Deutschman named Reynolds biz journalism chair at Nevada-Reno
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Veteran financial journalist and author Alan Deutschman has been named Reynolds Endowed Chair in Business Journalism at the Donald W. Reynolds School of Journalism at the University of Nevada, Reno.
Deutschman, 45, has covered Silicon Valley and other business topics for years. He was Fortune’s Silicon Valley bureau chief from 1992-95. He also wrote about the valley and other subjects for GQ, New York Magazine, Fast Company and Vanity Fair. One of Deutschman’s four books, “The Second Coming of Steve Jobs,” was about Silicon Valley, and he is at work on a major new book about the valley.
Deutschman also has written for TheDailyBeast.com and for Salon.com.
“With more than 20 years of experience in business journalism, Alan will be a boon for our students,” said Jerry Ceppos, dean of the Reynolds School in a statement. “And his deep knowledge of Silicon Valley will help us move closer to world leaders in technology who are only 45 minutes away by air and should be involved with our school.
Deutschman will teach business and other journalism courses beginning in January, develop a program in business journalism and research contemporary issues in the subject. Some of the courses will emphasize the coming “green economy” because of its importance to Nevada.
Deutschman succeeds the first chair in business journalism, David Morrow, who died in February.
Dow Jones CEO touts gains
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Les Hinton, the CEO of Dow Jones & Co., sent a memo to the Wall Street Journal‘s staff on Wednesday about the results from the changes made to the paper.
Hinton wrote, “Total print and online revenue for The Wall Street Journal are up more than 17% in the fiscal 2011 first quarter when compared with the same period a year before. Total print advertising revenue increased by more than 21% for the quarter ended last week. Digital advertising revenue was up more than 29%. And total print circulation revenue was up more than 9% – 13% if you factor in digital.
“As a basis of comparison, for the same three month period the New York Times has forecast total print and online revenue for its calendar third quarter to fall 2 to 3% compared with a year before. Total print advertising revenue is expected to be down 5%. Total digital advertising revenue is projected to rise 14%. And total circulation revenue is trending down 5%.
“Our fiscal 2011 first-quarter numbers show that this is our fourth consecutive quarter of year-on-year growth in print and digital advertising. Our investment in our products continues to pay off. It is early in the year but signs are pointing in the right direction. As always, thank you for helping us to not only meet but exceed our own high expectations.”
Read the entire memo, posted on Romenesko, here.
Of course, the large gains by the Journal are due partly to the introduction of some new sections.
Claman goes to great lengths to get a story
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Dave Walker of the New Orleans Times-Picayune writes Wednesday about how Fox Business Network anchor Liz Claman filmed a recent segment on a Gulf of Mexico oil rig, which she traveled to from a boat and then a stand-up personnel-transport net.
Walker writes, “‘It was really important not to tell the story from the executives’ standpoint,’ Claman said by phone Monday evening after returning to the mainland. ‘We could do that by sitting in a studio and showing a stock chart.
“‘We wanted to go out and talk to the rig workers. What impressed me and surprised me was how eloquent they were in talking about their situation, how much pressure they’ve been living with waiting for that so-called Sword of Damocles to fall on them. They could be laid off, they could lose their jobs. These are real-American stories and concerns. It was perplexing to all of us as to why this rig is idle. There’s no moratorium (on shallow water production). Why aren’t they working?’”
Later, Walker writes, “Claman’s live shots from the rig Monday required a crew of six, plus satellite technology, plus hundreds of yards of cable. The broadcasts marked the 600th episode of ‘Countdown,’ and Claman said she’s had more technical difficulties with live shots just 10 blocks from her network’s Manhattan headquarters.”
Read more here.
