Stories by Chris Roush
Bloomberg Markets wins two Sigma Delta Chi awards
by Chris Roush
Bloomberg Markets, a monthly magazine sent to subscribers of the Bloomberg terminal service, has won two awards in the national Sigma Delta Chi journalism awards given out by the Society of Professional Journalism.
In the magazine investigative reporting category, David Evans won for “Duping the Donors,” an examination of how telemarketing companies reap the benefits of raising money for nonprofit organizations.
In the magazine public service category, Stephanie Armour, John Lippert and Michael Smith won for “Poisoned System,” which detailed the problems with food safety and poisoning.
In addition, business journalism won in other categories.
In the investigative reporting category for newspapers with more than 100,000 circulation, “Prognosis: Profits,” by Ames Alexander, Karen Garloch, Joseph Neff and David Raynor, The News & Observer and The Charlotte Observer, was the winner. It’s an examination of the money being made by non-profit hospitals in North Carolina.
In the investigative reporting category for newspapers with between 50,000 and 100,000 circulation, the winner was “Cash Crop,” by Marc Perrusquia, The Memphis Commercial Appeal. His series examined how people were using tax laws intended for farmers to avoid large tax bills.
The winner in the public service in newsletter journalism category was “The Ugly Side of the U.S. Oil and Gas Boom,” by Brian Hansen, The McGraw-Hill Companies/Platts.
And the winner in the online column writing category was Chrystia Freeland, Reuters.
See all of the winners here.
WSJ editor praises Boston coverage
by Chris Roush
Wall Street Journal managing editor Gerard Baker sent out the following email to the staff on Tuesday morning:
Few stories in recent years have been as immanent in their scope or as diffuse in their provenance and ramifications as the events that unfolded in Boston last week.
From the moment the explosions occurred at the Marathon last Monday, right up to yesterday’s breakthrough story on the bomber’s family, Wall Street Journal staff converged from all corners to produce some of the finest breaking news coverage anywhere.
Reporters, editors, photographic staff, designers and others threw themselves at this story – often spontaneously, without waiting to be asked or assigned, generously offering their time and reporting resources.
Critical contributions came from Boston itself, Washington DC, Atlanta, Chicago, Canada, London, Moscow, Beijing and elsewhere. In New York, teams from Greater New York, Business News,
Financial News, the Sports and Law groups pitched in too.You all combined to support peerless coverage on our digital platforms, through social media, with video, graphics and compelling photography, and of course in print.
The commitment has been unstinting and the efforts indefatigable. I am especially gratified that our reporting of such a rapidly evolving story was at all times diligent, sober and rigorous. As wild rumor and unreliable internet gossip quickly became headline news, we stuck to the standards that serve our readers: proper sourcing, verified reporting and accurate and rigorous editing.
All this in the face of a story that was both emotionally intense and prolonged. Many staff worked right through the night last Thursday as the pursuit of the suspects unfolded and on through the next day and night.
It is always invidious to attempt to single out any individuals but we owe very special thanks to some in particular.
– Jennifer Levitz, Jon Kamp, Lisa Fleisher and Andrew Grossman responded right away on Monday and stepped in during the crucial hours when the story was breaking.
–Josh Dawsey was everywhere all the time, filing, digging up records and landing interviews. Jennifer Smith and Pervaiz Shallwani also were among the many on the ground who distinguished themselves; Pervaiz pulling an all-nighter during Thursday night and Friday morning’s dramatic events;
–In DC, Evan Perez and Devlin Barrett pressed on their sources all week (while also dogging the ricin story), and pulled all-nighters themselves;
–In Russia, Alan Cullison and Paul Sonne jumped into action when the connection to Dagestan became clear, making inroads with the family that no other organization could approach.Among editors, Betsy McKay of Atlanta and Kirsten Danis and Michael Amon of Greater New York, worked tirelessly with reporters, shaping our stories and guiding our reporters in the field with elegance and wisdom; the DC editing team, especially Peter Landers and Matthew Rose, showed great judgment and presence of mind amid chaotic events while shepherding vast amounts of copy; Bruce Orwall stepped in to orchestrate the masterful leder on the family and help organize coverage as the story crossed the Atlantic; and the web team, led by Sheila Courter, Christine Glancey, Brian Fitzgerald and Jennifer Hicks, kept the web site lively and engaging all week. The master of ceremonies, Jennifer Forsyth, balanced all of it — and Texas and ricin — with the insight and aplomb that have made the Wall Street Journal a serious player in US News in a way it had never been before.
Thanks to your commitment, perseverance, rigor and judgment, we demonstrated we can cover these stores as comprehensively as anyone and more accurately, more sharply and more intelligently than the rest.
TheStreet acquires DealFlow Media
by Chris Roush
Financial news company TheStreet Inc. announced Monday that it has acquired the financial newsletters and databases, The DealFlow Report, The Life Settlements Report and the PrivateRaise database from DealFlow Media Inc.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
“The DealFlow report covers the microcap equity markets including initial public offerings and private placements, while The Life Settlements Report focuses on life insurance settlements. The content of both newsletters will be made available to The Deal Pipeline subscribers. The target has 10 employees, half based in Petaluma, Calif., and the others in Woodbury, N.Y.
“DealFlow will continue to operate its DealFlow and Life Settlement conferences under a licensing agreement with The Deal. DealFlow founder and chief executive Steven Dresner will stay on during the transition period through a consulting arrangement. ‘The combination of our leading small cap finance content with The Deal’s M&A reporting is a natural fit,’ he said in a statement. TheStreet has used The Deal’s content as a growth platform to help increase revenue from subscription and licensing services.”
Read more here.
Oklahoma, Cal State-Fullerton to receive visiting biz journalism professors
by Chris Roush
Journalism programs at the University of Oklahoma and California State University, Fullerton will receive visiting business journalism professors next spring under an Arizona State University program funded by the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation.
This is the third year the foundation has funded business journalism professors at universities to encourage development of stronger business journalism education. The $1.67 million grant is administered through the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism at ASU’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.
“One of our goals in funding this grant was to broaden the reach of the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism into other institutions across the country,” said Steve Anderson, president of the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation.
The five-year program will ultimately create 11 visiting professorships at 11 different schools. Inaugural visiting professors taught at Colorado State University, Grambling State University, the University of South Carolina and Texas Christian University in spring 2012.
This past spring, visiting professors have taught at Central Michigan, Elon and Louisiana State universities.
Andrew Leckey, president of the Reynolds Center and the Reynolds Chair in Business Journalism at the Cronkite School, said the two schools were chosen from dozens of applications, and both presented “immediate and longer-term plans for solid business journalism coursework.”
Read more here.
Bloomberg revs up its video news operation
by Chris Roush
With a global television network operation in place, Bloomberg News is using video clips from its shows as well as Web-only videos to produce some 200 clips per day, signaling a new “digital first” approach, says Chris Berend, executive producer and head of digital video at Bloomberg, in a video interview at Bloomberg headquarters with Beet.TV
Berend says the digital desk aims to create “digital-friendly” stories, using Bloomberg-produced television as the back-end resource, and distribute them quickly to a worldwide audience.
CNBC gets into the crowd funding business
by Chris Roush
Philiana Ng of The Hollywood Reporter writes Monday about “Crowd Rules,” a new reality show on CNBC where businesses compete to win $50,000 in funding.
Ng writes, “Crowd Rules panelists emphasized the differences of their CNBC offering from that of ABC’s Shark Tank, which focuses on the entrepreneur and whose bickering ‘sharks’ are often the entertainment. Depending on who you believe, panelists Kiernan and Scott ‘agree 80 percent of the time’ or ’75 percent.’
“‘All three businesses have existing businesses that work that we have reason to believe that they would thrive,’ Kiernan said. ‘We’re not picking the worst so that we know what the outcome would be.’
“Why the $50,000 prize? Davies revealed that at one point the amount was actually ‘much larger.’ What he found, however, was that $50,000 was already enough for businesses to utilize for marketing or to put in elsewhere. (Companies have about 30 seconds in a final ditch effort to persuade panelists and the audience, who either vote with their head or their heart, what they’re going to do with the money.)
“Jim Ackerman, senior vp primetime alternative programming at CNBC, noted that the $50,000 prizes will not be given to the winners until after the episodes air, but Ackerman assured that they would receive the money.”
Read more here.
Reuters fires Matthew Keys
by Chris Roush
Thomson Reuters has dismissed Matthew Keys, the deputy social media editor of Reuters.com who was indicted on charges of aiding members of the Anonymous hacking collective, Keys said in a Twitter message on Monday.
Peter Henderson of Reuters writes, “Thomson Reuters spokesman David Girardin said that Keys was no longer with the company, effective Monday, and declined further comment.
“Keys was indicted in March by a federal grand jury in Sacramento, Calif., on three criminal counts alleging that he helped members of the Anonymous collective hack into computer systems of the Tribune Co. The alleged events occurred before he joined Reuters, the indictment indicated. He has maintained his innocence, and his arraignment is scheduled for Tuesday.
“In his job at Reuters, Keys posted news from Reuters and other sources on both company Twitter feeds and other means, including his own Twitter account. He was suspended from Reuters after last month’s indictment and his access to his Reuters email account was cut off. He continued to tweet from a personal account, @TheMatthewKeys, and identified himself as an editor at Reuters.”
Read more here.
Peter Szekely, secretary-treasurer of the Newspaper Guild of New York, issued the following statement: “Our contract with Thomson Reuters prohibits management from dismissing anyone without just and sufficient cause. We don’t believe the company has the required justification here. At this point, we intend to vigorously defend Matthew Keys as we would any other hard-working member of the Newspaper Guild of New York who had been fired without cause.”
Why the FT is launching a publication for investment advisors
by Chris Roush
Kelly O’Mara of RIABiz writes about the launch of a publication called FA IQ by the Financial Times that is aimed at financial advisors.
O’Mara writes, “Financial Times-owned Money-Media has launched a free online publication aimed at independent financial advisors. Managing editor Joan Warner says that FA IQ, which made its debut April 11, will fill a different niche than Money-Media’s other investment-oriented publications, Ignites and FundFire, with very little cross-over among them. But in a crowded marketplace (which includes RIABiz), competitors are skeptical about the online publication’s chances of finding an audience.
“‘There’s lots of apples and oranges, and if all you come to market with is a different variety of orange, good luck,’ says Jim Lowell, who publishes a newsletter about Fidelity and edits Forbes’ ETF Advisor publication.
“Warner says that FundFire and Ignites, which are subscription-based publications, ‘already have a fairly substantial readership coming from advisors.’ However, FundFire is primarily about separately managed accounts, and Ignites serves the mutual fund industry. ‘Over the years, we just heard a clamoring [from advisors] for a publication of their own.’
“Warner is hoping that FA IQ, which focuses on practice management and client relationships, will meet that need. While other Money-Media publications are all relatively news-focused, FA IQ will do primarily ‘service-y’ articles with a timely element, she says.”
Read more here.
Houston biz columnist says goodbye
by Chris Roush
Loren Steffy, the business columnist at the Houston Chronicle, says goodbye to his readers after nine years writing the column.
Steffy is joining a strategic communications firm with some of his former Bloomberg News colleagues.
Steffy writes, “More than nine years ago, when former Chronicle editor Jeff Cohen first discussed a column, he asked me how I would make mine different from the others out there.
“I told him I wanted to write a column that gave a voice to the voiceless constituents of the marketplace – investors, employees and consumers. Too often, their concerns are drowned out by the din and machinations of corporatespeak.
“We call this the business section, but that, too, is a holdover from a different era of journalism. What we really write about here is money and the people it affects.
“Following that flow of money led me to an incredible cast of characters over the years. I interviewed fishermen who live on the southern Louisiana island dubbed ‘The Bathtub’ in the Oscar-nominated film ‘Beasts of the Southern Wild,’ and I joked about drinking Irish coffee with a Saudi mining executive in Riyadh.
“I talked to musician Robert Earl Keen about the pension plan he provides for his band. I interviewed spinach farmers in the Rio Grande Valley, cotton farmers in the Panhandle, and wildcatters from the familiar fields of West Texas to the untapped fields of eastern Turkey.
“I also found hubris, most notably in the testimony of fallen Enron executive Jeff Skilling at his 2006 trial, and heartbreak, in the stories of victims and survivors of disasters such as BP’s Texas City refinery explosion and the Deepwater Horizon disaster.”
Read more here.
San Diego paper names new biz columnist
by Chris Roush
Dan McSwain is the new business columnist at the Union-Tribune in San Diego.
McSwain writes, “In college I pursued a writing career, eventually becoming the editor-in-chief of the college newspaper. I left college, along with a good job as a business reporter at a daily newspaper, to go back to work for my father.
“My first task was to lead the company’s automation effort. Later, as plant manager, a customer forced us into a crash program to adopt modern management practices such as just-in-time production scheduling and statistical analysis that vastly improved quality.
“In 1988, my dad sold his company, and I left to start a competing firm with my brother. It was successful. Five years later, I sold my half to focus on consuming bourbon and other drugs. Soon becoming a full-blown alcoholic, I moved quickly from wealthy to broke and homeless. It took me about four years to get sober; it’s been nearly 16 years since my last drink, drug, car wreck or jail term.
“Starting in 1998, I helped a friend start a digital media company. My role as CFO and VP of corporate development was to create the business plan, raise venture capital, help negotiate licenses and contracts, and do some user interface development. My friend sold that company to a Fortune 500 firm.
“I returned to journalism full time in 2000, as a business reporter. Over the last 13 years, I’ve also worked as a news editor, editorial page editor, editorial writer and managing editor. I’ve worked at U-T San Diego as an editorial writer and business columnist.”
Read more here.