Biz reporter Stanley Cohen dies at 93
Stanley Cohen, the longtime Washington editor of Advertising Age, died earlier this month at the age of 93. A story on the National Press Club website states, “An elevator ride away from More »
Bloomberg, Citi launch chat service for currency traders
Bloomberg L.P. Thursday unveiled a new chat service for foreign-exchange traders across various banks, developed in collaboration with Citigroup, reports William Launder of The Wall Street Journal. Launder writes, “The product is More »
Bloomberg News hires Boston Globe’s ME
Caleb Solomon will join Bloomberg News as an editor at large for Top News, beginning Monday, June 17, editor-in-chief Matthew Winkler announced Thursday. Solomon joins Bloomberg News from The Boston Globe, where More »
How business news fits in at BuzzFeed
Laura Shin of SmartPlanet.com writes about how business news will fit into BuzzFeed’s operation. Shin writes, “Section editor, Peter Lauria, who was hired from Reuters and spent five years at the New More »
Bloomberg econ reporter to become the Perfect Anecdote
Alex Kowalski, an economics reporter for Bloomberg News in Washington, is leaving the wire service for graduate school in urban planning at Cal-Berkeley. “I will focus on housing, community and economic development, More »
Housing begins to rebound
by Liz Hester
Good news for homeowners who have made it through the last several years and were able to hang onto their homes. Prices are going up, giving them more equity for the first time in years.
Here’s the story from Bloomberg:
In Buffett’s hometown, newspaper expands business coverage
by Chris Roush
The Omaha World-Herald newspaper in Nebraska, which was purchased by billionaire investor and Omaha resident Warren Buffett in 2011, has been expanding its business news coverage in recent months.
The expansion includes adding two new staffers to the business news desk — one experienced reporter, Russell Hubbard, most recently of the Birmingham News, and one new graduate, Paige Yowell, dedicated to helping to feed the section’s online page with breaking news, started in the last two months. It also has a new blog called Money Talks that started at the end of January.
Cyprus saved. Or is it?
by Liz Hester
Finance ministers agreed early Monday on a bailout for the Mediterranean island of Cyprus. While the agreement averted the near-term disaster, much of the coverage focused on the fact that the aftermath is going to do long-term damage to the island’s finances and population.
Here’s the top of the Wall Street Journal story:
Fankie Flack: PR, Wikipedia and the business journalist
by Frankie Flack
Last week I noticed an article in PR Week, a public relations trade magazine, that the ongoing debate over PR and Wikipedia has again reared its ugly head.
This site has become a fascinating, perplexing and aggravating focus of the PR industry as its open-source basis creates functional and ethical problems for our industry.
Alternate deal for Dell?
by Liz Hester
Recently we wrote about the plan that Dell founder Michael Dell has for taking the company private and some of the backlash he’s facing from current investors about the offer price.
But Sunday, details about additional offers for the computer maker emerged, setting up a three-way race for control.
What were they thinking? Edition No. 982
by KBlessing
Less than a year after the infamous JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s “London Whale” trading scandal that led to a $6.2 billion loss, IR Magazine gave an award to Jamie Dimon, the company’s chief executive officer, for having the best investor relations by a CEO or chairman in the large market capitalization category.
Though perhaps IR Magazine is giving Dimon the award for the way he handled investor relations following the scandal, in April 2012 Dimon described the would-be sweeping trading scandal as a small event that had been exaggerated out of proportion on JPMorgan’s first-quarter earnings conference call.
Covering the business of health care
by Liz Hester
One of the biggest expenses many people will incur is the cost of a long-term illness or recovery from an accident. It’s no secret that hospital stays are expensive and that’s not likely to change even after the Affordable Care Act. Covering these costs will be an important part of business journalism going forward.
The New York Times had a story about Kaiser Permanente and how it’s just not making enough money despite being held up as a model for what the system could be:
Freddie Mac sues the banks
by Liz Hester
In the first government-sponsored litigation to come out of the Libor rigging scandal, Freddie Mac filed suit against the largest banks and the British Bankers’ Association. The lawsuit claims the mortgage company was harmed by “collusive activity.”
Here’s the Wall Street Journal story:
Charges filed in Facebook IPO fraud
by Liz Hester
Beware where you buy shares in initial public offerings, since apparently those can be faked just like lottery tickets or anything else.
Federal prosecutors filed charges Tuesday against a Florida man for trying to sell fake Facebook shares.
Yet another European crisis
by Liz Hester
Just when you thought it was safe to stop worrying about Europe and move onto other concerns, Cyprus decides to go and remind everyone that the world economy isn’t as robust as we all might wish.
Here’s the story from the New York Times:
The business media on wash trades
by Liz Hester
The markets are going through another revolution in the form of wash trades, which can be used to manipulate the markets.
The Wall Street Journal had this story:
Push back on ETF fees
by Liz Hester
The Wall Street Journal had an interesting story about Fidelity and exchange traded fund fees on Thursday. Many ETFs are touted as a way for individual investors to gain exposure to various asset classes.
But according to the WSJ, the fees may make it harder for Fidelity to capture market share:
From real estate exec to business journalist
by Chris Roush
Brad Thomas has more than 25 years of experience in the commercial real estate brokerage business.
But more than three years ago, he switched careers and moved into business journalism.
Retail sales jump, but by how much?
by Liz Hester
The fact that retail sales were up 1.1 percent made headlines in the major business papers and web sites.
But the placement of the so-called core number, the one most watched by economists and other market analysts, in various stories is something to note.
Illinois pension charged by SEC
by Liz Hester
The Securities and Exchange Commission said Illinois didn’t put enough into its state pension and charged the state with securities fraud. It’s most noteworthy because it’s only the second time the agency has gone after a state.
Here are the details from the Wall Street Journal”
The changed PR-journalist equation
by Peter Himler
Last week my former Associated Press client Tori Ekstrand invited me to speak at the School of Journalism & Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. After a two–hour snow delay in New York, I finally found my way to the Freedom Forum Center on campus where Tori, now an assistant professor, and a handful of her undergraduate students gathered to hear my point-of-view on the evolution of the communications industries.
In a nutshell, I explained, we’ve entered an age when every company and every individual is a media outlet with the capacity to create and syndicate content. At the same time, nimble media upstarts with names like Buzzfeed, Politico, Huffington Post, TechCrunch, TMZ, Drudge, and a myriad others have mastered the art of headline histrionics. In so doing, they have siphoned off a growing share of the public’s ever-divided attention spans from legacy media, which today are struggling to retain the influence they once enjoyed.
Frankie Flack: How did I get this terrible pitch?
by Frankie Flack
A few weeks ago I used this column to complain about how marketing fundamentals were invading the public relations field and eroding media relations basics. New tools for a new era of engagement has had a sweeping impact on the public relations field.
While I firmly believe that this new way of thinking has been largely detrimental to media relations, there has been some interesting new ways to use media relations for a marketing effect.
Jobs still top of mind
by Liz Hester
Jobs and the reports tracking them seem to still be tops of mind for business publications these days. I realize that we just talked about this last week, but there were several interesting coverage during the weekend.
From the New York Times, which just a few days before ran a front page story saying companies still weren’t hiring, was this piece:
The business of Star Wars
by Liz Hester
Bloomberg Businessweek was out Thursday with an excellent profile of Disney and the acquisition of Lucasfilm and Star Wars. The big takeaway for nerds everywhere is that key members of the original cast are likely to return (maybe):
Here’s creator George Lucas’s slip up:
Celebrating open records
by Liz Hester
When a friend texted a picture of an alert from our local television station that said “Video: Coverage of Sunshine,” I laughed out loud. Then I went to see what the story was really about since I was fairly sure that the sun rising didn’t count for news (at least not yet). It’s Sunshine Week.
The first thing I found was the site for the week-long spotlight tagged “Open government is good government,” which is sponsored by John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Bloomberg LP, American Society of New Editors, and Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.