Tag Archives: AP
AP losing mutual fund writer to mutual fund company
by Chris Roush
Associated Press business editor Hal Ritter sent out the following staff departure on Monday:
Sorry to report that Mark Jewell is leaving AP after 23 years to join John Hancock in Boston to write about the company’s mutual funds. As a senior financial writer, Mark will report on Hancock’s international stock funds. He’ll be writing for financial advisers and institutional investors, as well as individual investors in Hancock’s funds.
Mark joined AP in 1990 in his home state of Washington and has worked his way ever eastward: temporary stints in Seattle and Olympia, 10 years as a newsman in Spokane, three years in Indianapolis as a business reporter and the last five years in Boston as a personal finance writer.
Mark has done a great job for us since 2008 covering the mutual funds industry and personal investing. Since early 2009, he has written the highly regarded Of Mutual Interest column, which appears in major newspapers like The Washington Post and is part of the weekly Money & Markets Extra product. He also writes for the daily M&M product and has produced many strong centerpieces on fund trends.
Mark has been a good colleague to all of us in Business News, and we’ll miss him. Please join me in wishing him much success in his new job. He’ll be with us through most of next week.
Center for Public Integrity hires two biz journalists
by Chris Roush
The Center for Public Integrity is investing in the coverage of finance with two new hires.
Alison Fitzgerald, a 2009 Polk Award winner, author and longtime Bloomberg economics and enterprise reporter, will oversee the Center’s financial coverage as well as much of its state money-in-politics work. She is joined by Dan Wagner, who comes to the Center from the Associated Press’ Washington bureau, where he specialized in financial regulation.
Both Fitzgerald and Wagner will start, appropriately enough, on tax day, April 15.
Fitzgerald’s career highlights include writing the 2011 book “In Too Deep: BP and the Drilling Race that Took it Down.” Her reporting has appeared in the New York Times and International Herald Tribune, among other publications. Prior to joining Bloomberg in 2000, Alison worked as a reporter, and then international editor, for the Associated Press. She also has worked as a reporter at the Philadelphia Inquirer and Palm Beach Post in Florida.
Fitzgerald is a graduate of Georgetown University and earned a master’s degree from Northwestern University. Given her fluency in French and Italian, it’s perhaps appropriate that the long list of reporting awards she’s won includes a 2008 Overseas Press Club honor. Her coverage of secretive political donors won her a 2011 National Press Foundation Everett Dirksen Award for distinguished reporting of Congress.
Wagner has worked at the Associated Press since 2008, where is most recent work focused on financial regulation reporting, particularly the banking industry’s relationship with official Washington. Among his many scoops and deep dives are stories on former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s close Wall Street contacts, government subsidies to abusive mortgage companies, lavish spending by bailed-out bankers.
Before joining the Associated Press, Wagner worked for two years at Newsday, where he won a National Headliner Award for uncovering risky lending by American Home Mortgage — a practice that helped lead to the company’s demise. Wagner, a graduate of Harvard University, has also worked stints at the Boston Globe and National Public Radio.
Read more here.
AP names new director of financial products
by Chris Roush
Brian Scanlon, director of the AP Election Services portfolio, has been promoted to an expanded role, adding oversight of AP’s business and financial products.
His appointment was announced Thursday.
“We find growing market interest in news services combining government and elections coverage with business and economic news,” said Sue Cross, senior vice president for business development and partner relations in the Americas, in a statement. “Brian has excelled in combining news and data to develop these types of services and brings outstanding ability to drive added growth at the intersection of government and financial information.”
Scanlon joined the AP in 2006 after serving as director of sales at Ipsos Public Affairs research company and Learning Insight Inc.. He also worked in research and polling services at Synectics for Management Decisions and Peter D. Hart Research.
He is a graduate of Loyola University of Chicago, holds a master’s degree in liberal arts from the University of Chicago and was a 2009 Sulzberger Fellow at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism.
AP’s financial news services deliver consumer-oriented coverage to millions of consumers via newspapers, broadcast outlets and digital portals and services, as well as fast, insightful reporting for investors and executives. Products include AP Financial News, providing fast corporate and economic news; AP Money & Markets, a multimedia service on market news and analysis; Financial Impact, a news service covering the non-business news that has financial impact; and the AP Small Business Report.
AP biz reporter duped by fake LinkedIn account
by Chris Roush
Beware of fake LinkedIn accounts for company executives. The Associated Press has run the following clarification:
“NEW YORK (AP) — In a Nov. 17 story about changes CEO Ron Johnson has instituted at J.C. Penney Co., The Associated Press attributed to Michael Francis, a former Penney president, comments about Johnson’s leadership of the company.
“The AP quoted Francis as saying that Johnson sticks to his beliefs and that Francis harbors no hard feelings toward Johnson, who fired him. “Life is too short,” Francis was quoted as saying.
“AP obtained the quotes through an email conversation it initiated from a page for Francis on the social network LinkedIn. After the story was published, Francis called the AP to say that the LinkedIn account belonged to an impostor, and that he himself had made no comments to AP about Johnson. Francis said he had contacted LinkedIn and that the company eliminated the account.
“LinkedIn confirmed to the AP that it had eliminated the account but declined to discuss why it did so or whether it had evidence the account was fraudulent.”
Read more here.
AP launching series on the Great Recession
by Chris Roush
The Associated Press will launch a series exploring changes wrought by the Great Recession with reports documenting the downturn’s profound impact on jobs that support a broad middle class in the United States, Europe and other developed countries.
The series, “The Great Reset,” will begin with stories appearing from Jan. 23 to Jan. 25. Five additional installments will run about six weeks apart into the fall.
The main reporters on the series are Paul Wiseman out of Washington and Bernard Condon out of New York.
“They came back with a startling story,” said Hal Ritter, the AP business editor, in a phone interview with Talking Biz News. “Most of the jobs lost were middle class jobs. They found that since the recovery began three and a half years ago, no middle class jobs have come back. And this is true in developed countries around the world.”
Technology — specifically powerful software that runs computers and an array of machines and devices — is eliminating the need for many jobs throughout companies and across industries, according to the AP report.
“Bernard and Paul have been working at it full time for three month,” said Ritter. “They started out looking broadly, and then they got narrower and narrower. They have reported it globally. We have pulled in staffers from Europe and Asia. It’s ambitious, but certainly there is no better opportunity in our careers. What bigger event has there been than the financial crisis and The Great Recession?”
“The Great Reset” will include photos, AP interactives and video elements. The series will be available on AP Mobile in the “Big Stories” section. More stories will run later in the year, Ritter said.
In addition, AP’s initial reports on the hollowing out of middle-class jobs will fuel discussion during the annual AP Davos Debate, on Jan. 25 at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Moderator of the session, titled “Creating Economic Dynamism,” will be AP Senior Managing Editor for U.S. News Mike Oreskes.
AP financial markets editor leaving wire service
by Chris Roush
Associated Press business editor Hal Ritter sent out the following staff announcement:
It’s with much sadness that I report that Erin McClam is leaving us for a job as a writer at NBCNews.com.
Erin joined AP fresh out of the University of Georgia in December 1999 as a reporter in the Atlanta bureau. He moved to New York in August 2002 as a bureau reporter and became a federal courts reporter in February 2003. He was promoted to national writer in September 2005. When the Top Stories Desk was established in January 2008, Erin was one of its original editors. He took up residence in Business News two years later, while still a TSD editor. He joined our department in January as markets editor.
That’s the official bio, and, of course, it says little about what Erin has meant to the AP. Erin is an editor par excellence. Many days, I’ve marveled how he has teamed with a reporter to elevate good work to great. Most of you have had the great fortune to work with him on these stories. Afterward, I invariably hear praise for the experience.
Erin is also a wonderful colleague; all of us have enjoyed our associations with him. So we’ll miss his editing skills – and his presence.
Erin’s last day will be Friday, Dec. 21. Please join me in wishing him the best in all that lies ahead in his career.
Hamrick joins Bankrate.com as DC bureau chief
by Chris Roush
Mark Hamrick, immediate past president of the National Press Club, will join Bankrate.com in January in the newly created position of Washington bureau chief.
Hamrick will cover the White House, Congress and financial regulatory agencies for the award-winning network of personal finance websites operated by Bankrate.com.
“Now more than ever, Washington policy changes are affecting Americans’ pocketbooks,” said Julie Bandy, editor in chief of Bankrate.com, in a statement. “Bankrate is going to leverage Mark Hamrick’s extensive beat experience to provide our readers with timely and interesting content focusing on the issues and players affecting American consumers’ finances.”
Hamrick spent the past 26 years in various roles at the Associated Press, most recently as a business reporter and editor for the AP’s broadcast division. He has been based in Washington since 1987.
Bankrate is a publisher, aggregator, and distributor of personal finance content on the Internet. Bankrate provides consumers with proprietary, fully researched, comprehensive, independent and objective personal finance editorial content across multiple vertical categories including mortgages, deposits, insurance, credit cards, and other categories, such as retirement, automobile loans, and taxes.
AP names new markets reporter
by Chris Roush
Associated Press business editor Hal Ritter sent out the following staff announcement on Friday:
Steve Rothwell, a former Bloomberg News reporter, joins us Monday as a markets reporter. Steve worked for Bloomberg in London for 12 years and covered most of the financial markets – from stocks and bonds to credit and currencies. He also covered European airlines and luxury carmakers. For us, he’ll have a lead role in writing our daily Wall Street story and also will do enterprise stories.
Steve grew up in the U.K. and is a graduate of the University of Warwick. He majored in German and business.
He started his career on the business side. His first job was account manager for the manufacturing company Zeppelin in Germany, and he joined Bloomberg in 2000 as an analyst covering the Eurobond market. He became a journalist at the start of 2004.
Steve has covered Europe’s debt crisis and is fluent in German, a couple pluses for us, even though he’ll be based in New York.
If you’re in New York, join me in welcoming Steve next week.
AP seeks markets reporter
by Chris Roush
The Associated Press seeks a reporter for the Business News department’s financial markets team at its New York headquarters.
This reporter will have the task of explaining the financial markets to investors and consumers in daily coverage and through high-level enterprise stories.
The successful candidate must be a critical thinker and be well sourced among investors, traders and other Wall Street experts. The candidate must identify market trends and write authoritative stories with flair and clarity. The candidate must be an idea machine; somebody who sees stories where others see fog. The candidate must be a team player and willing to write for the AP’s Money & Markets product and to work with staffers through AP Business News.
The right candidate will have a deep knowledge of markets and finance and a demonstrated talent for writing clear and compelling stories with rigorous, thought-provoking analysis. The candidate will have experience delivering stories in a fast-pace world with a proven ability to work under deadline pressure. We’re looking for someone who isn’t satisfied to simply inform.
The candidate’s writing must sparkle and appeal to all readers, whether their sensibilities hew closer to Wall Street or Main Street. At least three years of experience in markets writing is required.
For more information, contact Deputy Business Editor Kevin Shinkle at kshinkle@ap.org.
AP banking reporter Gogoi hired by CNN Money
by Chris Roush
Pallavi Gogoi, the banking reporter for the Associated Press, has been hired by CNN Money to be a breaking news editor.
CNN Money managing editor Lex Harris sent out the following announcement:
I’m pleased to announce we have a new breaking news editor: Pallavi Gogoi will be joining the team on September 19.
Pallavi knows news and she knows business and finance. She got her start at Dow Jones in the 1990s before heading to Business Week and USA Today and most recently, the Associated Press. She’s covered markets, the big banks and the biggest companies. And oh yeah, she speaks five languages (Hindi, Bengali, Assamese, Urdu and English).
Pallavi will be the leader of our new Sunday coverage team with Emily, and will work Sunday through Thursday.
Please extend a warm welcome.
Gogoi was also a correspondent in BusinessWeek’s Chicago bureau. Prior to BusinessWeek, she covered finance for Dow Jones News, often writing for The Wall Street Journal.
