Monthly Archives: March 2011
The business journalist who beat the Federal Reserve
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Here is a video remembrance of Mark Pittman of Bloomberg News, who in May 2008 asked for the documents from the Federal Reserve Bank as to what banks had received money from it during the economic crisis.
Pittman died in November 2009 before the courts ruled that the Fed should release the documents. Those documents were released Thursday.
Bloomberg Television's "Game Changers" boosts website clicks
by Chris Roush
Joe Pompeo of Yahoo News writes Thursday about “Game Changers,” a show that launched earlier this year on Bloomberg Television.
Pompeo writes, “With ‘Game Changers,’ Bloomberg TV has attempted to broaden its reach in the evening, well after the crowd of financial professionals who watch the network’s dayside programming have left their offices and trading-room floors for the day. CNBC, the dominant business news network, made significant inroads in the prime time demographic by developing nighttime documentaries on topics such as porn and pot that appeal to the youthful audience favored by advertisers. Bloomberg TV’s answer was to create a show that would spotlight people like Wintour, Jay-Z, Jon Stewart and Mark Zuckerberg — four of the 12 subjects featured on the first season of ‘Game Changers.’
“So did it work?
“Executives for Bloomberg TV declined to comment through a spokeswoman, and viewership numbers are not available since the network is not rated by the Nielsen Company. Nor would the network confirm whether there will be a second season.
“But the spokeswoman pointed out that the show has been a boon to web traffic. Last October’s episode on Apple chief Steve Jobs, for instance, is the second most viewed video of all time on Bloomberg.com, she said. The network is expected to unveil further additions to its evening programming this year.”
Read more here.
Bloomberg Television’s “Game Changers” boosts website clicks
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Joe Pompeo of Yahoo News writes Thursday about “Game Changers,” a show that launched earlier this year on Bloomberg Television.
Pompeo writes, “With ‘Game Changers,’ Bloomberg TV has attempted to broaden its reach in the evening, well after the crowd of financial professionals who watch the network’s dayside programming have left their offices and trading-room floors for the day. CNBC, the dominant business news network, made significant inroads in the prime time demographic by developing nighttime documentaries on topics such as porn and pot that appeal to the youthful audience favored by advertisers. Bloomberg TV’s answer was to create a show that would spotlight people like Wintour, Jay-Z, Jon Stewart and Mark Zuckerberg — four of the 12 subjects featured on the first season of ‘Game Changers.’
“So did it work?
“Executives for Bloomberg TV declined to comment through a spokeswoman, and viewership numbers are not available since the network is not rated by the Nielsen Company. Nor would the network confirm whether there will be a second season.
“But the spokeswoman pointed out that the show has been a boon to web traffic. Last October’s episode on Apple chief Steve Jobs, for instance, is the second most viewed video of all time on Bloomberg.com, she said. The network is expected to unveil further additions to its evening programming this year.”
Read more here.
Covering a story that may, or may not, be fake
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Terry Maxon, the airlines reporter for the Dallas Morning News, writes about how the paper handled the story of a mysterious bidder offering to purchase all of the shares of the parent of American Airlines and take it private.
Maxon writes, “A few hours after it got the letter Tuesday, AMR said ‘we have no corroborating information to demonstrate the offer described in the letter is legitimate. Prior to receiving the letter, AMR had never heard of Sterling Holdings. We have not been able to confirm whether Sterling Global Holdings is a shareholder of AMR.’
“Weintraub declined to name any of his investors, any past deals, where his company was domiciled, the names of his various companies, etc. The address on the letterhead appears to be, by looking at Google Maps, a small collection of offices in a non-descript one-story building in Davie, Fla.
“Around my office, we debated what to write about the letter. Do you just ignore it? Do you treat it as a legitimate offer? We agreed that we should put something in the Dallas Morning News, but not much – just noting that the offer had come and what AMR said about it.
“I wrote more on Airline Biz, but with great skepticism. Other media also raised questions about the proposal and bidder. Heather Struck of Forbes referred to the ‘mysterious offer.’ Shira Ovide of the Wall Street Journal referred to it as ‘the Weird (Non) Takeover Offer for American Airlines.’ Teresa Rivas of Barrons calls it ‘The Case of AMR & The Phantom Suitor.’”
Read more here, including criticism Maxon received from an American pilot for writing anything.
Fed releases documents to biz media
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The Federal Reserve released thousands of pages of secret loan documents under court order, almost three years after Bloomberg LP first requested details of the central bank’s support to banks during the financial crisis, reports Craig Torres of Bloomberg News.
Torres writes, “The Fed was forced to make the disclosures after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal by the Clearing House Association LLC, a group of the nation’s largest commercial banks.
“The justices left intact lower court orders that said the Fed must reveal documents requested by Bloomberg related to borrowers in April and May 2008, along with loan amounts. The late Bloomberg News reporter Mark Pittman asked for the records under the Freedom of Information Act, which allows citizens access to government papers. News Corp.’s Fox News Network LLC filed FOIA requests for similar information on loans made from August 2007 to March 2010.
“Former Fed officials, lawyers representing the central bank, and even some Fed watchers have expressed concern that revealing the names of discount-window borrowers could keep banks away from the facility in the future.”
Read more here.
Fox Business Network vs. CNBC in daily ratings
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Bill Gorman of TVbytheNumbers.com has ratings data for Fox Business Network and CNBC that shows how they performed on Tuesday.
Fox Business announced last week that it would be rated publicly by Nielsen for the first time.
The numbers show that for the day, CNBC had an audience of 169,000 viewers while the three-and-a-half-year-old Fox Business had an audience of 57,000 viewers. In the key 25- to 54-year-old demographic, CNBC had 49,000 viewers and Fox Business had 14,000 viewers.
Among viewers between 35 and 64, CNBC had 88,000 viewers while Fox Business had 33,000 viewers.
During primetime, CNBC had 213,000 viewers, while Fox Business had 64,000 viewers. In the 25 to 54 age bracket, CNBC had 84,000 viewers to 22,000 for Fox Business. And in the 35 to 64 demographic, CNBC had 118,000 viewers to 40,000 for Fox Business.
See all of the data here.
Kiplinger family wants to turn Florida property into industrial park
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The Kiplinger family that operates Kiplinger’s Personal Finance and other publications wants to develop a piece of property it owns in South Florida into an industrial park for biotech and aviation companies.
George Andreassi of the Scripps newspaper in Stuart, Fla., writes, “The Kiplinger team anticipates submitting a formal master site plan application in three or four weeks, said Martin Bonan, a lawyer working for family. The team hopes to receive County Commission approval for the master plan by the end of the year.
“Once that happens, companies that want to set up shop on the property would buy some of the property, formulate their plans and submit them to the county Growth Management Department, Bonan said. Some companies could benefit from the county’s ‘expedited permitting’ process for industries the county is trying to attract.
“Kiplinger’s grandfather, W.M. Kiplinger, started buying property in Martin County in 1952 and the family has amassed several thousands of acres of land, most of it in Western Palm City, east of I-95 and north of Martin County, county records show.
“But Kiplinger said no other land is being proposed for development at this time and the family takes a long term view of its investments.”
Read more here.
AP names new financial markets editor
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Associated Press business editor Hal Ritter made the following staff announcement on Wednesday:
In four weeks, Jennifer Merritt will join us as financial markets team leader, filling a job that has been vacant since Joyce Rosenberg became Money & Markets editor. Jennifer has spent the past 3 1/2 years at Dow Jones, most recently as deputy personal finance editor of WSJ.com/SmartMoney.com. Before that, she was in charge of careers, workplace and management education coverage for The Wall Street Journal and WSJ.com.
Before Dow Jones, Jennifer was a special projects editor at Money magazine and business editor of the Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville. She started her career at Business Week, where she produced the widely read and influential annual ranking of business schools.
Jennifer graduated from Northwestern University in 1998 with a bachelor of science degree in journalism. While at Northwestern, she was on a team of student journalists whose investigative work resulted in the pardon of a man on death row who had been beaten by police until he confessed to a murder he did not commit. This month, another defendant in the case, who was serving a life sentence, was freed.
While business editor in Jacksonville in 2006, Jennifer’s business section won a SABEW Best in Business Certificate of Merit. In 2003, she received Northwestern’s first Young Alumni Emerging Leader Award.
A business reporter on deadline
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Rodney Ho of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution took this photo of Rachel Tobin, the paper’s commercial real estate reporter, as she writes a story in the newsroom Wednesday afternoon.
Mark Pittman would have loved today
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Heather Landy of American Banker writes Thursday about Mark Pittman, the Bloomberg News reporter who had the idea of asking the Federal Reserve Board to release the documents that showed which banks had borrowed money during the financial crisis.
Landy writes, “How Mark would have delighted in all this, not because he would have looked forward to spending his day opening PDF documents and doing the painstaking work of translating them into plain English, but because he understood and appreciated the fact that institutions – be they financial, political or otherwise – have a natural propensity to obfuscate.
“Mark died in November 2009 at the age of 52. He had a history of heart trouble, an irony not easily reconciled by anyone who knew just how much heart he had, for his work, for his family, for his colleagues and his friends. Mark taught me nearly everything I know about the credit markets. When I worked on the corporate finance reporting team he led for a time at Bloomberg, he warned me there was nothing he could offer to advance my writing – some editors are wordsmiths; Mark was not – but the one thing he could really teach me, he said, was ‘how to get people to tell you sh*t.’
“The disclosure and accountability Mark demanded of the Fed on behalf of his fellow citizens has been delivered now, and it will continue to be delivered, at least on a delayed basis, thanks to the portion of the Dodd-Frank Act instructing the Fed to identify discount window borrowers some two years after the fact.”
Read more here.