Tag Archives: Information
TheStreet.com and Gatehouse Media strike content deal
by Chris Roush
TheStreet.com announced that it has reached a deal to provide its investing and personal finance content to GateHouse Media newspapers.
TheStreet, which publishes more than 3,000 original articles and 500 unique videos each month, will make its content available for GateHouse Media to integrate into its local business coverage.
“Combining our depth and breadth of financial coverage with GateHouse’s strong presence in the local markets they serve will enhance the digital growth strategies of both companies and solidify TheStreet in its position as the Internet’s Business Section, reaching a highly targeted, unduplicated, engaged and affluent audience,” said Daryl Otte, the CEO of TheStreet.com, in a statement.
GateHouse, formerly Liberty Group Publishing, has 79 newspapers. Its newspapers include the Norwich (Conn.) Bulletin, the Register-Mail in Galesburg, Ill., the Rockford Register-Star in Rockford, Ill., and the Quincy (Mass.) Patriot-Ledger.
Read more here.
It’s good to be Michael Lewis
by Chris Roush
Jessica Pressler of New York magazine profiles business journalist Michael Lewis, the author of “The Big Short” and a Bloomberg News columnist.
Pressler writes, “Lewis is often referred to as a business writer, and this is sort of true, in that his narratives usually focus on some kind of market, be it for bonds or baseball players. But he’s a business writer only in the same way that Malcolm Gladwell is a business writer. What most interests him are people and how they behave. He tends to favor stories about mavericks — like the Tuohys, Beane, Whitney, and Steve Eisman, the eccentric short-seller star of The Big Short — smart people who identify gaps of logic and market inefficiencies, and take advantage of them.
“He can write about these kinds of people with such skill in part because he is one of them. At a time of peril for his industry, Lewis has managed to build what amounts to a personal empire of long-form journalism, with a Warren Buffett-like collection of brands and eye for the next big thing. ‘He’s got good instincts for the individual story and for the broader picture of where that story belongs,’ says Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter. ‘The big story of the day is the world financial crisis, and he’s the most kick-ass business writer out there.’
“His aptitude for translating and enlivening financial concepts has made him an indispensable observer of the crisis: In May 2010, Politico reported that The Big Short had been name-checked on the official Senate record at least fifteen times since its publication just two months before, and that Hill staffers had been calling Lewis at home for advice. ‘I was watching television the other day, and Barney Frank was quoting him like he was a Nobel laureate,’ Whitney tells me. This spring, Lewis was invited to Washington to speak to the Democratic Caucus. Afterward, senators came up to him, fanlike, asking for autographs. ‘I have to believe that’s how a lot of those senators learned about the crisis,’ says Whitney.
“This week, he’ll publish a follow-up, Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World, a collection of hilarious reported essays he wrote for Vanity Fair that finger Icelandic elves, greedy Greek monks, and a German obsession with shit as a few of the culprits for the European economic collapse. With the continent in an economic meltdown nobody seems to really understand, these witty ethnographic studies have been received like Rosetta stones. It will be no surprise if senators are soon consulting them, too.”
Read more here.
Wall Street Journal revises privacy policy
by Chris Roush
The Wall Street Journal revised its website privacy policy on Tuesday to allow the site to connect personally identifiable information with Web browsing data without user consent.
Julia Angwin of The Journal writes, “Previously, the Journal’s privacy policy stated that it would obtain ‘express affirmative consent’ to combine personal data with ‘click stream information’ culled from the website.
“The company said that combining the two types of data would ‘allow us to provide customized Wall Street Journal service information to our users,’ said Alisa Bowen, general manager of The Wall Street Journal Digital Network. ‘It is not being applied retrospectively and only applies going forward to new registered users and subscribers.’
“The change is part of a larger effort by the Journal to streamline and simplify privacy policies across its network of websites, which include WSJ.com, Marketwatch.com, AllthingD.com, Barrons.com and SmartMoney.com.
“The new privacy policy applies to all the websites in the Wall Street Journal Digital Network. It contains expanded disclosures of online tracking techniques and contains links to opt-outs from third party tracking networks. It also adds a disclosure that it collects mobile device IDs. The company says that it only shares the mobile identifiers with companies that provide internal analytics.”
Read more here.
NYFWA looking for Financial Follies dancers and singers
by Chris Roush
The New York Financial Writers’ Association is gearing up for the 2011 Follies, which will be hold Nov. 18 at the Marriott Marquis.
The staff is hired, the show is written, the hotel is booked. All they need is business journalists.
If you have ever wanted to be on stage, here’s your chance to work with your colleagues and NYC theatre professionals. No talent required. Just a willingness to have a lot of fun with a lot of wonderful people. No pressure, no stress. We even buy dinner on rehearsal nights.
The following is the rehearsal schedule: Ripley-Grier Studios, 520 8th Ave FL16, 6-9 p.m.: Wednesday, October 12; Monday, October 17; Wednesday, October 19; Monday, October 24; Wednesday, October 26; Monday, October 31; Wednesday, November 2; Monday, November 14; Wednesday, November 16.
SIR Studios, 475 10th Ave.: Monday, November 7 and Wednesday, November 9 (6-9 p.m.); dress rehearsal, Saturday, November 12 (10-4 p.m.).
For more information, contact NYFWA executive manager Jane Reilly at Nyfwa@aol.com.
Columbia Journalism Review to publish book of best business journalism
by Chris Roush
The Columbia Journalism Review plans to compile the best business reporting of the past year and publish it in book form.
Dean Starkman writes, ” A team at the Columbia Journalism Review — yours truly, Dean Starkman, Ryan Chittum, Martha Hamilton, ex-of the WaPo and now of Politifact, and Felix Salmon of Reuters — are putting together a book of the best of the best business writing of the past, oh, 18 months or so.
“To be published by Columbia University Press next spring, the book (great vacation reading!) will pull together the cream of the cream, the very best in (English-language) business writing from around the world. Team BBW2012 has been searching high and low, far and wide, etc., over any remotely business-related subject—corporate, financial economic—and from any medium: print, Web, radio, TV(?). The sources can range from mainstream (e.g. Wall Street Journal, Vanity Fair) to lonely blogger, alt media, journalist, non-journalist. We’re ready to read.
“We’re already launched and have found some amazing things. But there’s room for more. There’s only one requirement: it must be great.
“Send links to dean@deanstarkman.com.
“This is a crowd-sourcing request. There’s no reward or anything. But you will have a chance to define what’s ‘best’ in business writing, which is not a small thing.”
Read more here. Vintage Books published a similar compilation from 2001 to 2004 that was edited by Andrew Leckey.
How “Marketplace” became a business news behemoth on the radio
by Chris Roush
James Rainey of the Los Angeles Times writes Saturday about “Marketplace,” the radio show that explains business and economic news to the masses in a way that’s entertaining.
Rainey writes, “‘Marketplace’ (which airs locally at 3 and 6:30 p.m. weekdays on KPCC-FM [89.3] and at 2 p.m. on KCRW-FM [89.9]) has grown into a behemoth and spawned several spinoffs because it does more than merely ‘the numbers.’ The half-hour show specializes in finding the owners who’ve lost homes in the mortgage crisis, commiserating with the growing legion of unemployed and, this week for example, personalizing the retirement of Apple’s Steve Jobs with a first-person account from a former co-worker.
“The cumulative weekly audience for the half-hour ‘Marketplace’ and its related programs, like Marketplace Money and the Marketplace Tech Report, has grown to a combined total of 9.3 million per week. That’s compared with 5.3 million a week in 2001, shortly after the franchise was bought by the Minnesota-based public radio power that is now called American Public Media.
“More than 500 public radio stations carry the shows. That includes ‘Marketplace Money’ on the weekend and ‘Morning Report,’ updates that public radio stations tend to sprinkle into weekday breaks in National Public Radio‘s ‘Morning Edition.’
“‘Marketplace’ has survived for more than two decades. But before it came along, tweedy public radio hadn’t embraced business programming. Then a journalist named JJ Yore, who had covered public media, moved West from Washington, D.C., to launch ‘Marketplace,’ which began with only three other full-time employees. Yore just wanted to tell good stories and to send a message by basing the program far outside the financial industry’s cozy home base.”
Read more here.
Biz journalists make $56,000 a year, according to study
by Chris Roush
U.S. business journalists reported a median salary of $56,220 for 2010-11, according to research for the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism released Tuesday.
Linda Austin of the Reynolds Center writes, “Those figures come from phone surveys of 773 randomly selected business journalists, about 60 percent of whom were interviewed in 2010, with the rest questioned in 2011. The median means half make more and half make less.
“The research was commissioned by the Reynolds Center and conducted by Behavior Research Center Inc., a market-research firm in Phoenix.
“The 2010-11 median is lower than the $65,000 to $70,000 that was volunteered by 394 business journalists in an informal online survey by the Society of Business Editors and Writers last year. It finished collecting data for its 2011 survey Aug. 12.
“In the Reynolds research, fewer business journalists reported a drop in pay than when the same question was asked in 2010. Last year, about one in three reported a decline in pay over the past two years, compared with fewer than one in five this year.”
Read more here.
Biz journalists optimistic about local economy
by Chris Roush
U.S. business journalists — who keep their fingers on the economic pulse of their local communities – said they expected business conditions in their areas to improve in the next six months, according to a new survey commissioned by the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism.
In a telephone survey of 300 business journalists conducted nationwide in mid-July, many described their local economies as suffering. One in three said business conditions were bad, and four out of 10 said jobs were hard to get.
But they expressed optimism that their local economies would improve, with only 6 percent saying they expected things to worsen in six months.
When asked about their local housing market, about one in four said the residential real estate market was better now than six months ago. Only about one in 10 thought it would be worse in six months.
Conditions were toughest in the West, where half the business journalists said their local economies were bad and jobs were hard to get.
Read more here about the survey’s results.
Biz section celebrates one-year anniversary
by Chris Roush
Ted Natt Jr. writes Wednesday about the one-year anniversary of a standalone business section in the Southern Pines Pilot, a North Carolina newspaper.
Natt writes, “But don’t think for a minute that we’re resting on our laurels.
“‘In the future, I’d like to see a little more authoritative analysis of what drives our economy week in and week out,’ Woronoff said. ‘The health care industry is changing. The tourism industry seems to be rebounding, and the retail industry appears to be booming. We need to put that all into context and show our readers how it affects them.’
“While Bouser is also ‘thrilled’ with the new section, he would like to see more balance.
“‘To me, the ideal business page would have a mix of macro- and micro-economic issues,’ he said. ‘We always want readers to be responsive and tell us how we’re doing. But we also want to be proactive and help shape the future debate about the best way for Moore County to grow economically.’
“The last year has been a whirlwind. I attained full-time status with the newspaper last January, adding the health care and Southern Pines beats to my duties. But the Business section will always be closest to my heart.”
Read more here.
Business reporter’s desk appears in “Contagion” movie
by Chris Roush
Benny Evangelista, a technology reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle, writes about how his desk has a role in the upcoming movie “Contagion” starring Jude Law.
“And frankly, my desk is in a perpetual state of clutter. I like it that way. I used to have a sign that read, ‘A Clean Desk is the Sign of a Sick Mind,’ but I can’t find it anymore.
“In short, it’s Hollywood’s stereotypical idea of a reporter’s desk.
“And this isn’t the first time my desk played a role in a movie.
“When I was still a business reporter for the Oakland Tribune, two production members for the 1999 crime drama “True Crime” visited the newsroom. They were immediately attracted to my desk, which at one point was so messy, the fire marshal ordered me to clean it up. They took numerous photos.
“The movie was filmed in another building, and Eastwood’s character – a womanizing Tribune reporter trying to clear a Death Row inmate – sat in a newsroom that looked far nicer than the real one.