Crain’s Chicago hires political columnist Miller

Rich Miller, a well-known political columnist in Chicago, has been hired by Crain’s Chicago Business to write a regular column, reports Robert Feder. Feder writes, “Starting Friday, Miller’s column will appear twice monthly on chicagobusiness.com and eventually will be seen in Crain’s weekly print publication as well. “The move marks a return to Chicago media […]

Snark prevalent in business journalism on TV

Doug Kass of TheStreet.com writes about why many of those who appear on business journalism television shows talk snark instead of facts. Kass writes, “The fact is that snark (a combination of snide and remark) and opinion far too often envelop the business media instead of facts and figures. Equally infuriating is the confidence of […]

The need to explain complex topics

Michael Casey, a senior columnist for The Wall Street Journal, writes for the Committee to Protect Journalists about the need for business journalists to do a better job of explaining complex financial topics to readers. Casey writes, “To be fair, those on the losing side of Wall Street’s profit-driven pre-crisis trade mostly failed to exploit new […]

Did online biz reporters become watchdogs?

David Dayen of The American Prospect reviews Dean Starkman‘s book “The Watchdog that Didn’t Bark” about business news coverage during the financial crisis and wonders whether online journalists acted as watchdogs when the mainstream media didn’t. Dayen writes, “It’s for this reason that Starkman disappoints when talking about online journalism. While he praises blogs like […]

Has the business news pendulum swung?

Josh Brown, who writes The Reformed Broker blog, wonders whether the business news media is now too much on the lookout for a scandal. Brown writes, “The premise is that with more middle class investors crowding into the stock markets during the 90′s and an explosion in demand for investing stories, the types of investigative […]

The need for better local economic news

David Lieberman, the executive editor for Deadline.com, writes about the need for local media to improve their business and economics coverage. His essay won the American Institute for Economic Research’s Women’s Economic Roundtable (WERT) Business Journalism Prize. The prize awards $2,000 to the best essay on an economic or financial topic written by a current […]

What has become of business journalism?

Hamza Shaban reviews for The New Yorker the book “The Watchdog That Didn’t Bark” by Columbia Journalism Review‘s Dean Starkman. Shaban writes, “Business reporters are supposed to make the complex worlds of finance and commerce intelligible to non-experts. But business journalism generally failed to predict the looming credit collapse, although a few reporters warned of […]

Why Seeking Alpha is great for investors but uncomfortable for PR people

Editor’s note: We asked David Jackson, the founder and CEO of SeekingAlpha.com, to respond to a post last month from our PR curmudgeon Frankie Flack. Here is his response. Investor relations and corporate public relations used to be straightforward, because companies could largely manage their own news coverage. The recipe: (1) build relationships with analysts […]

Frankie Flack: Pack journalism invades business journalism

So last month, I was taking a short mental health break (flacking, believe it or not, can be draining at times), and I ran across a weird little story at Gizmodo about a company that will take your ultrasound and, using 3-D printing, create a life-size replica of your fetus. The story wasn’t, strictly speaking, […]

Subtle change at WSJ editorial board

David Warsh of Economic Principals writes about what he perceives to be a subtle change on The Wall Street Journal‘s editorial board. Warsh writes, “I mention it here because a change took place last week in the WSJ department in which Murdoch may have an interest in changing things somewhat in the orientation of  its […]