Tag Archives: Blogging
Changes coming to Tennessean biz coverage
by Chris Roush
Lance Williams, the business editor of The Tennessean in Nashville, writes about changes to the paper’s business coverage.
Williams writes, “Look for a host of improvements to our daily and Sunday business sections, as well as our online business coverage.
“All these new features will be rolling out over time.The first is the launch of our ‘Inside Nashville business’ blog, which can be found at blogs.tennessean.com/business.
“Our reporters gather lots of information for stories they are working on, and not everything makes it into the daily paper. Now, we will be able to share more of that information on the business blog — helping us add more breadth and depth to our coverage.
“:In addition, we want to use the business blog to show you some of the personality of Nashville’s business community, and to help present information in a new and interesting way. Be sure to go online and check it out.
“In addition to our experienced reporting staff, another ongoing feature of our business coverage is the use of experts from the community who provide valuable expertise to help improve your business or financial picture.
“Beginning this week, we are pleased to add Rory Vaden, a New York Times best-selling author and co-founder of Southwestern Consulting.”
Read more here.
MSN Money launches Money Now site
by Chris Roush
MSN Money has launched a new site called MoneyNOW that covers the latest financial news.
The announcement states, “Today, the first MSN channel is launching NOW content, moneyNOW. moneyNOW is MSN Money’s new destination for smart, original and entertaining takes on the latest business and investing topics that are buzzing on the web.
“Wondering how much money rapper Psy is making from his record-setting YouTube video, Gangnam style? Find out at Money Now. Did you know that gun sales soared during Black Friday this year? Or that Japan Airlines is now offering KFC on flights? Those are the kind of conversation starters you’ll learn about on Money Now.
“But that’s not all. On moneyNOW, investors learn what companies their peers are searching for more information about and get to the bottom of controversies, like why Wall Street hates Groupon’s CEO. Instead of straight earnings news, you’ll find out why Tiffany may regain its lost luster. Instead of reading about Congressional budgets, moneyNOW goes right to the key question: Is the mortgage deduction at risk?
“To stay abreast of the latest money trends, writers and editors review results from MSN’s proprietary Demand Dashboard, which sifts data from real-time sources like Twitter, Bing and StockTwits. These results are also filtered every few minutes and displayed in MSN Money’s Trending now module, which you can find on MSN Money and moneyNOW. The Trending Now box displays financial keywords and stock tickers that are hot on search and social media. The results are determined by a computer algorithm, displayed automatically and not filtered.”
Read more here.
Behind the scenes at the WSJ’s Corporate Intelligence blog
by Chris Roush
Dennis Berman, the marketplace editor of The Wall Street Journal, is looking for the paper’s news staff to contribute more to the Corporate Intelligence blog that it launched in October.
Here is the email he sent out on Wednesday:
The Corporate Intelligence (http://blogs.wsj.com/corporate-intelligence/) blog was launched at the start of October and has already become one of the most popular on WSJ.com. (Please follow it on Twitter, too, at https://twitter.com/WSJCorpIntel
As our readers’ tastes change, we want to give a fast, smart commentary on the day’s business news, quickly elaborating on breaking stories and drawing on all the knowledge from the WSJ family of reporters.
Our goal is speed – but without creating a whole new set of work for you, the editors and reporters.
To do that we’re going to experiment with a bunch of ways to help our two lead writers, Tom Gara and Joe White, serve the CI readers.
How we do it:
By phone – the quickest option is to have a phone chat with Tom or Joe, who will write up a post based in the format of “We spoke with the WSJ’s {….} and here’s what they had to say….” This will take up the least of your time and let the post get online fastest.
Mail us a tip – Put a few lines / links in a mail, attach any relevant docs or research, and send it through to us, and we’ll turn it around into a post.
Write us a piece – If you have the time to write it yourself, go ahead. Posts can be anything from a couple of paragraphs sharing a colorful detail or a point worth making, to longer pieces of reporting or analysis. We’re flexible.
We’ll call you - We will be reaching out to reporters when we feel there is a post worth doing, so expect to hear from us if something is happening on your beat.
What we are looking for:
Quick takes – If a story is breaking on your turf, or if a breaking story has a connection to your turf, we can get your take online fast, and with as little friction as possible (see above). Especially handy if you want an online placeholder that can be built upon as things develop.
Stock moves – if a company you cover is up or down significantly (say a 7% or greater move) in trading, and there’s a business reason for it – corporate / industry troubles, a bad demand forecast, move of a key exec, etc – then we want to cover it, quickly and succinctly. A paragraph now can often be worth 1,000 words two hours later.
Expanding on stories – if you have a story out and there is another angle to it, or something more to add that didn’t fit into the original piece, we can handle it.
Data points and charts – Any interesting estimates or figures that make their way to you via analysts, research shops, companies, PR people and so on, can make for quick, snappy blog posts. Often a notable number, like an estimate for timber demand in the Northeast or a chart of changing consumer spending on fast food, is enough to merit a mention somewhere, but not enough to base a story on.
Okay, how is it really done?
- Beyond Hawker and Huawei, U.S. And China Still Need Each Other – context for US-China trade disputes, based on a phone chat with Sudeep Reddy
- In The Ticketing Business, Who Can Disrupt The Master? – Diving into one aspect of Ethan Smith’s story on Redbox moving into the ticketing game, based on a phone chat with Ethan
- Business In The Obama Era – a series of posts on the day after the election, bringing together input from lots of reporters – some phoned in, some emailed, but made for a solid day’s coverage.
- Time Warner’s Jeff Bewkes Has An Unlikely Lunch Partner: Roger Ailes – A quick and fun little post by Christopher Stewart and Martin Peers, a good example of a great individual detail that wouldn’t make for an entire story but is perfect for the blog.
- Beyond The Numbers: American Employers Respond To The Jobs Report – multiple reporters filing quick single-par responses to the job report, makes for a post bigger than the sum of its parts
The WSJ’s health blog is now flatlining
by Chris Roush
Public relations practitioner Brian Reid mourns the loss of the Wall Street Journal‘s health blog, where the plug was pulled on Thursday.
Reid writes, “In March of 2007, I wrote a note to the staff here about the emergence of a new health blog that I thought had the potential to upend the health reporting world. The outlet was the WSJ Health Blog, and it promised to marry the Journal’s excellent reporting with a certain degree of take-no-prisoners snark and honesty. The Health Blog’s first writer, Jacob Goldstein, told me early on that his charge was to write ‘all of the things that we know as true but can’t really say in the paper.’
“It was half-threat, half-promise. Jacob was cranking out a half-dozen posts on a busy day, covering the silly and the serious, and leaving no stone unturned. Outrageous executive compensation was called outrageous. Goofy television commercials were called goofy. Drug reps were compared to Faustus. And the perspective of everyone from key researchers to hospital CEOs were put on display. It was a fun read and an important read. Everyone tuned in.
“That was 2007. Jacob is long gone. So is his boss, Scott Hensley (who has brought the spirit of Health Blog to NPR’s Shots blog). Over time, the blog became understaffed, and the tone had slowly morphed from a saucy, comprehensive teller of truths to a good-but-not-great source for basic consumer health news, with a handful of biopharma briefs. Yesterday, the WSJ announced that they were killing the endeavor after a 5-year-run.
“The Health Blog helped create the modern health-reporting landscape, and it’s hard not to see echoes of Jacob and Scott’s original vision in Shots, in the online work that Matt Herper does at Forbes, in newspaper health blogs in places like Boston and Los Angeles. But good work and an impressive parent outlet is no guarantee of lasting success. The Health Blog outlasted the New York Times’ Prescriptions effort (shuttered in February) as well as health blogging efforts at USA Today.”
Read more here.
CNNMoney.com, Kiplinger win Eppy Awards
by Chris Roush
CNNMoney.com and Kiplinger’s Personal Finance were among the business news media that won Eppy Awards for their websites.
CNNMoney won for best business/finance website with 1 million unique monthly visitors and over.
Your Business by Kiplinger.com won for best business/finance website with under 1 million unique monthly visitors.
In addition, Bloomberg News won for best investigative/enterprise feature on a website with 1 million unique monthly visitors and over for its “Wired for Repression” series.
The Financial Times won for best news or event feature on a website with 1 million unique monthly visitors and over for “Understanding Libor.”
The Globe and Mail won for best business blog with 1 million unique monthly visitors and over for “Economy Lab.”
The Denver Post won for best business blog with under 1 million unique monthly visitors for “The Balance Sheet.”
The Eppy Awards, given by Editor & Publisher, honor the best media-affiliated websites across 31 categories. Now in its 17th year, this international contest has broadened its scope to keep up with the ever-changing Internet industry.
See all of the Eppy winners here.
WSJ launches real-time biz news stream and blog
by Chris Roush
The Wall Street Journal launched Wednesday Corporate Intelligence, a real-time story stream focused on the most important company news of each business day.
Available for Journal digital subscribers by desktop and as a web app saved to smartphones, the stream brings together the expertise of the Journal’s network of business reporters across the globe.
Anchoring the stream are posts from the new Corporate Intelligence blog, which covers the businesses, industries and companies big and small that are shaping our times. Peering inside board rooms and across industry ecosystems, Corporate Intelligence will produce market-moving news, and analyze, in real-time, what business changes mean for investors, customers, and employees.
“We’re speeding up the highest-quality content of The Wall Street Journal, and we’re delivering it in the way more people are reading today—on their smartphones,” said Dennis K. Berman, the Journal’s Marketplace editor, in a statement.
In conjunction with the Journal’s worldwide reporting staff, the stream and blog will be edited and written by Tom Gara, who recently joined the Journal from the Financial Times, with assistance from Joseph B. White, a Journal reporter based in Detroit who was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of management turmoil at General Motors.
Crain’s New York launching Insider blog
by Chris Roush
Crain’s New York Business’ stand-alone newsletter will no longer be delivered by email every morning. Instead, subscribers can now get the weekly business newspaper’s online content on a blog.
Kara Bloomgarden-Smoke of The New York Observer writes, “‘Crain’s Insider newsletter will be turned into an online blog that offers news on the business of politics during the day,’ Crain’s announced. Unlike the newsletter, which cost a separate fee, blog access will be included with a Crain’s subscription.
“If the format is reminiscent of City and State‘s old Notebook blog, well, the writing may be as well. Crain’s reporters Andy Hawkins and Chris Bragg are both former City and State staffers. ‘The city’s hundreds of thousands of business owners, executives and professionals will need these stories more than ever as Mayor Michael Bloomberg completes his final 15 months in office and the people of New York choose his successor. The mission of the new Crain’s Insider blog is to deliver that ‘insider’ coverage – as only Crain’s New York Business can – to the city’s entire business community,’ the magazine’s editor Glenn Coleman said in a press release.
“The blog will launch on Monday, October 15 and the last newsletter will go out the previous Friday.
Read more here.
Big traffic increase this week for Apple blogs
by Chris Roush
Steve Smith of minonline writes about how blogs and sites that cover Apple reported a large increase in traffic this week due to the iPhone 5 announcement.
Smith writes, “IDG’s Macworld.com reports that its live blog of the Apple presentation in San Francisco drew 300,000 unique visitors. The event gave the site twice its typical day’s traffic.
“At Conde Nast’s Ars Technica they employed a proprietary platform built for just such an occasion. The special area of the site allowed for live blog posts to work seamlessly with image feeds as well as user commentary. The area was also designed to withstand hard hits to the servers and still perform.
“And the platform came in handy yesterday. Ars Technica recorded its highest traffic day ever because of the iPhone 5 event. It counted 15.3 million page views, 500% the daily average. The live blog platform got a whopping 13.2 million of those pages, up from 8 million for the iPhone 4S launch. As for unique, it drew 684,000.
“Searches for ‘iPhone 5′ had already been up over 100% in August, according to reports.
“Which is not to say that interest was unprecedented everywhere. Jacob Ward, editor-in-chief of Popular Science, tells minonline that his site’s live blog of the roll-out did get a characteristic bump, but not of quite scale or longevity one might expect. ‘It was our highest-trafficked topic of the day, what with our liveblog of the event, but was eclipsed by other unrelated topics the following day — science miscellany and the like,’ he says.”
Read more here.
Blogging about Apple is big business
by Chris Roush
Mark Milian and Adam Satariano of Bloomberg News write about how a number of bloggers who cover tech company Apple are making quite a nice living.
Milian and Satariano write, “Arnold Kim, who started MacRumors in 2000, left his job as a kidney doctor four years ago to focus on his gossip site full time. Ad revenue supports his wife and two kids, as well another full-time writer and freelance contributor.
“‘There’s a lot of brand recognition and as a result, loyalty to Apple,’ Kim said. At some point, ‘Apple rumors became a mainstream thing.’
“News sites have ramped up their coverage of Apple in recent years. Rumors about the latest iPhone can be found in just about any general-interest news publication.
“AppleInsider is a sort of newswire service just for Apple news. The site employs about a half-dozen regular writers and editors. Neil Hughes joined the site in 2009 from the Charlotte Sun Herald newspaper. The editor enforces Associated Press writing style and has a reporter assigned to work on in-depth features about Apple’s business.”
Read more here.
Coal company sues reporter, paper for libel
by Chris Roush
A coal mine operator is suing a West Virginia newspaper and reporter for libel.
Erica Peterson of WFPL writes, “Murray Energy Corporation filed suit against environment reporter Ken Ward Jr. and the Charleston Gazette last month, andthe case was recently transferred to federal district court. The complaint is on behalf of Murray Energy, its subsidiaries, and owner Bob Murray.
“According to the complaint, an article Ward posted on his popular ‘Coal Tattoo’ blog was libelous. Murray claims the blog post — called ‘Mitt Romney, Murray Energy and Coal Criminals’ — has damaged his reputation and business and thus put the jobs Murray Energy provides in Belmont County, Ohio in jeopardy.
“In the post, Ward mentions a fundraiser Murray held for Mitt Romney. He also mentions the Crandall Canyon Mine disaster in Utah. Crandall Canyon was operated by a Murray Energy subsidiary, and the company pleaded guilty to criminal mine safety violations for the accident that killed six miners and three rescue workers in August 2007. Ward also cites an Associated Press article that reports another Murray subsidiary in Ohio pleaded guilty to criminal violations of the Clean Water Act last month.
“The complaint says the ‘false and defamatory manner’ of the post is ‘affirmatively stating and clearly implying’ that Murray, Murray Energy and the company’s subsidiaries are criminals.”
Read more here.




