Tag Archives: Job changes
Reflecting on one year in business journalism
by Chris Roush
Jessica Seaman covers energy, Dillard’s Inc., Windstream Corp. and Acxiom Corp. for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
She joined the Democrat-Gazette in May 2012 after graduating from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill with a bachelor’s in journalism and history.
She previously worked for The Daily Tar Heel and interned at four newspapers, including the Democrat-Gazette and the Greater Wilmington Business Journal. The other two are The Progress-Index, in Petersburg, Va., in 2010 and The Messenger in Mount Airy, N.C., in 2007.
Seaman spoke with Talking Biz News on Thursday by email about what her first year in business journalism has been like. What follows is an edited transcript.
Why did you decide to take a job in business journalism after graduation?
One of the things I did when I started my job search was email my editor from my internship at the Democrat-Gazette to see if any positions had opened up at the paper. Initially, I was looking for a job on the city desk as that was where I had interned, but there wasn’t one open at the time. I was told there was an opening on the business desk for an oil and gas reporter. I decided to apply because I thought the beat would be interesting to cover and the opportunity would allow me to develop new skills.
What formal, or informal training, did you have in business reporting?
The only training I had in business reporting was a semester-long internship at the Greater Wilmington Business Journal in Wilmington, N.C., in 2010.
With no training, how did you learn to cover your beats?
I learned to cover my beats by using skills I had already developed through school and internships. The first thing I did when I started the job was to talk with the Oil and Gas Commission to learn more about the history of the industry in the state. And when Dillard’s, Windstream and Acxiom were added to my coverage I met with each of the companies’ spokesperson and toured their headquarters. Also, before I moved to Little Rock I reached out to professors to for advice; Sarah Cohen, who was lecturing at Duke at the time and co-taught one of my classes, gave me some really good tips.
What was the hardest thing to get up to speed on?
The hardest thing was learning about all the documents public companies file.
How helpful have your co-workers been in improving your skills?
The reporters and editors here have taught me a lot. My editors have guided me but they also give me room to explore new story ideas.
What else did you do to learn about your business beats?
In my first month at the paper, I invested a lot of time in learning about the oil and gas industry in the state. To do this I spent a lot of time talking with companies. One of the companies even took me on a tour of a drilling and fracking site — I got to climb a drill rig to see how it operates!
I also met with homeowners who live in the counties where the Fayetteville Shale is located and spent a lot of time driving around the area to get a sense of the communities and how big of a presence the industry had in the area. By doing this I was able to find out (and write a story about) that companies were scaling back drilling in the shale and moving to operations to other states.
How helpful have the companies been that you cover?
Most of the companies have been willing to meet and talk with me.
If you could go back and do it all over, what would you do differently?
I would have taken a business reporting class at UNC. I had wanted to take at least one while I was there but I wasn’t able to figure out how to make it work with my schedule.
What advice would you give to someone starting in business journalism today?
My advice is to get out of the newsroom and meet your sources in person and develop a good working relationship with them. Sometimes, when you are covering business, it can become too easy to stay in the newsroom, so get out and find a story.
Do you see yourself staying with business reporting?
I think with the way the industry is right now, reporters need to be as versatile as possible and not limit themselves to one area of reporting. My career goal is actually to become a foreign correspondent and I think the skills I have developed as a business reporter will help me achieve that goal.While I want to cover conflict zones, I can also see myself as a business reporter in London, or another foreign city.
Why do you like the beat?
I like my beats because they are so diversified. One day I can be climbing a drill rig in 100 degree heat and the next I’m at Dillard’s headquarters interviewing buyers and designers.
WSJ names editors to oversee ethics, standards
by Chris Roush
Wall Street Journal managing editor Gerard Baker sent out the following editor appointmsnts Thursday afternoon:
An unshakeable commitment to the strictest ethics and the highest values is at the core of our journalism. Everything we do at Dow Jones is underpinned by our striving to meet the most elevated standards of reporting and editing. It is the foundation of the trust our readers place in us.
As we complete the integration of the Journal and Newswires we place renewed emphasis on those standards. We will shortly be a fully integrated newsroom that produces thousands of headlines, articles, blog posts, comments, tweets, videos and other journalistic articulations a day. As we have noted, this is an unmatched opportunity to extend and enhance our content. But it also requires us to be ever more vigilant in enforcing our standards.
Today I am delighted to announce that Neal Lipschutz will lead these efforts. He becomes Editor, Ethics, overseeing ethics and standards for The Wall Street Journal and all of Dow Jones. He will be the arbiter on all standards and ethics issues. Neal will report to me.
Karen Miller Pensiero is named Editor, Newsroom Standards. Karen will oversee our final reading and journalism standards and ethics, among other areas. She also will continue to oversee standards and ethics training for the global news group. Karen will report to Neal.
Neal has been a linchpin of Dow Jones journalism for more than three decades. He embodies the very spirit of our values and standards. He joined the company in 1982 as a national copy reader for Dow Jones Capital Markets Report. He has held a series of news management positions for what was the stand-alone Dow Jones Newswires news team. He was named to his current role of Newswires managing editor in 2005. Neal received a 2011 Best in Business award from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers for his columns for Dow Jones Newswires.
Karen is among the most trusted and experienced editors we have. She joined Dow Jones in 1984 as an intern and then in 1985 as a copy editor at The Wall Street Journal Europe in Brussels, where she later was Money & Markets Editor. She moved to New York in 1990 to create the Overseas Copy Desk, and has held a variety of corporate positions, including director of corporate communications and director of Dow Jones Interactive Publishing International. She rejoined the news department in 2004 to bolster its standards and ethics team.
With Neal’s appointment, the title of Managing Editor, Dow Jones Newswires, is retired. I will be appointing a new editor to oversee the newswires products. But this change should be read as the ultimate statement of our commitment to creating a single news organization. Newswires now no longer has a separate reporting and managerial structure; it is, instead, a central part of a single, harmonized, global newsroom.
Please join me in congratulating Neal and Karen on their new roles.
WSJ names editor of content development
by Chris Roush
Wall Street Journal managing editor Gerard Baker sent out the following staff promotion on Thursday:
As technology advances and demand for reliable information grows apace, we face proliferating opportunities to expand our audience and increase the range of ways in which we interact with it. The most dynamic news organizations will seize those opportunities and dominate the media landscape.
To help us achieve that goal, I am pleased to announce that Elyse Tanouye is appointed to a new role as Editor, Content Development, leading efforts to broaden our journalism’s reach and impact through books, e-books, television and film, events, and specialized web projects. An initial project will focus on building a WSJ e-book line with News Corp.’s Harper Collins, following on from the successful publication last month of our ebook on Pope Francis.
Elyse is admirably equipped to achieve these objectives, having been an invaluable member of the Dow Jones news staff for 25 years. She has served as Deputy Managing Editor for Standards and Ethics since 2011 and previously she was the Corporate Editor, tasked with transforming the Marketplace section to focus on business news and features. As the health and science bureau chief, Elyse led reporters whose health coverage in print and online won multiple awards. She was part of a team of reporters and editors who won recognition for their coverage of breakthroughs in AIDS therapies in the mid-1990s.
Elyse joined Dow Jones in 1988 and in addition to her unrivaled news experience, she also has an MBA, making her that rare thing in our world: a journalist who knows how to run and grow a business!
Please join me in congratulating Elyse on her new role.
SmartMoney consumer reporter headed to CNBC
by Chris Roush
Kelli B. Grant, the senior consumer reporter at SmartMoney.com, is leaving the online personal finance magazine for a job at CNBC on its website, a CNBC executive confirmed to Talking Biz News.
She will be on the enterprise team run by Jeff Nash, who joined CNBC.com last month from SmartMoney as well. Nash had been editor of SmartMoney.com.
Grant has been at SmartMoney since June 2005. She teaches consumers how to save money and spend it wisely through the popular Deal of the Day column three times a week. Her columns were promoted in SmartMoney magazine before the print publication was killed last year, and have been reprinted in the Wall Street Journal, AOL, MSN, Yahoo! and Diversion magazine.
She has also served as a SmartMoney.com source for television and radio interview, and also report savings tips in SmartMoney TV’s weekly Three Tips videos.
Before that, she was a reporter and an assistant to Marshall Loeb at Marketwatch.com.
Grant is a 2004 graduate of Ithaca.
Shactman leaves CNBC for MSNBC
by Chris Roush
Brian A. Shactman, who joined CNBC in June 2007 as a general assignment reporter and fill-in anchor for business day programming, is leaving the network to host MSNBC’s “Way Too Early.”
He’ll begin on Monday, May 13 and will also contribute to “Morning Joe.”
He covered a range of stories for the network, including the BP Oil Spill, the fall of Bear Stearns, the final Space Shuttle launch and Hurricanes Isaac and Sandy. In 2012, Shactman was nominated for an Emmy Award for his coverage of the oil boom in North Dakota.
Previously, Shactman hosted “CNBC Sports Biz: Game On” on the NBC Sports Network and “Worldwide Exchange” on CNBC.
In addition to his business-day responsibilities, Shactman has been the sole correspondent on documentaries for the network including “Cigarette Wars,” “America’s Oil Rush” and “Dangerous Trade: Exotic Animals.”
Prior to CNBC, Shactman worked at the NBC owned-and-operated station in Connecticut, as well as ESPN. Shactman won the Associated Press award for a documentary on Hall of Fame basketball coach Geno Auriemma in 2003. He also received three regional Emmy nominations in 2002 for his sports anchoring and reporting.
Buzzfeed hires two more business reporters
by Chris Roush
Buzzfeed business editor Peter Lauria made the following staff announcement on Tuesday, which was obtained by Michael Calderone of The Huffington Post:
Hi All, and just a quick note to inform everyone of two new hires for the business team: Matthew Lynley and Mariah Summers.
Matthew is joining us from The Wall Street Journal, where he ran the paper’s “Digits” technology blog and directed live coverage of tech events and earnings calls. He will cover technology business, focusing on the sector mainly from a corporate perspective, for us. Matt can speak the language of both executives and developers, is well sourced in the industry, has deep institutional knowledge, and a tireless work ethic. Prior to the WSJ, Matt worked at Silicon Alley Insider and VentureBeat. Like his business team colleague Sapna, Matt is a UNC graduate (no more Tar Heels hires, I promise!). Some of his most recognized stories include a major profile of Digg founder Kevin Rose; how the videogame ‘Minecraft’ became a huge hit for the small Swedish company behind it; cloud storage provider Box turning down a more than $500 million buyout offer from Citrix; and what smartphones and tablets mean for the future of typing and keyboards. He starts on May 20. Matt says, “I’m insanely excited to be joining Buzzfeed and writing for an audience that’s completely plugged into the social Web. The talent at Buzzfeed is staggering, and I’m looking forward to exploring what is essentially a brand new territory when it comes to business coverage.”
Mariah joins us from The Financial Times Group’s FundFire trade publication. She is a quiet killer on the public and private institutional investing beat, if only because her stories are behind a very expensive paywall. But with the sources she has developed over three years on the beat, the approachable way she writes about complex financial investments, and her eagerness to break news, she will be making loud noises on the beat in short order. Mariah holds a master’s degree from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and a B.S. from the University of Oregon (she’s a native of Portland). In addition to finance coverage, Mariah is a strong general assignment reporter who will also be backing me up on media/entertainment business coverage. Mariah’s scoops illustrate her range as a reporter–she’s broken stories on layoffs at Pinebridge, the firm spun out of government-rescued AIG; tough hiring policies at the Portland Police Bureau that ultimately led to an officer shortage; and the plight of mothers whose stillborn babies are unknowingly sent to Hart Island in NY. Prior to FundFire, Mariah held internships at the New York Daily News, Portland Tribune, and Dateline NBC. She starts on May 15. Mariah says, “I am thrilled to be joining Buzzfeed’s talented team of reporters and editors to help build out its business vertical. Buzzfeed’s creative way of delivering news is a model that I’ve admired for a long time, and I’m excited to take on the challenge of finding ways to report and write business news to bring readers to the site.”
Both Matt and Mariah are copied here, so please feel free to touch base and welcome them to Buzzfeed.
The business team still has one more slot to fill and I’ve met with some very strong candidates over the last few weeks, so I’m hopeful that I’ll be sending around another one of these emails announcing the final hire shortly.
The initial reaction to our first few posts, particularly the ones around Apple, Urban Outfitters, and Warren Buffett, has been extremely positive, and it makes me anxious to get the team together and the vertical up and running. People keep saying they can’t to see what Buzzfeed is going to do with business coverage. We can’t wait to show them.
Read more here.
WSJ names senior editor for Europe, Middle East and Africa
by Chris Roush
Thorold Barker, the Wall Street Journal editor who oversees coverage of Europe, the Middle East and Africa, sent out the following staff promotion on Tuesday morning:
I am delighted to announce that Bruce Orwall is appointed Senior Editor, Europe, Middle East and Africa. Bruce’s new role is a pivotal step in the integration of the European news organization as we focus on building our local audience across all platforms, while also boosting the quality of our news and analysis in the region for global readers.
He will lead the news operations of the combined WSJ and Newswires teams. Bureau chiefs in the region will report to him on day-to-day news-related matters, as will the London-based editors responsible for financial, corporate and political/economic coverage.
Bruce has been the Wall Street Journal’s London Bureau Chief since 2009. In London, he has led a wide array of coverage from Libor manipulation and the WikiLeaks saga to News Corp.’s phone hacking scandal, the 2012 Summer Olympics and a royal wedding.
From 2004 to 2009, Bruce was the Los Angeles Bureau Chief, overseeing areas including the entertainment business, immigration, the aerospace and defense industries and gambling. Prior to that, he was the West Coast Entertainment Editor, overseeing coverage of the media business in L.A. while continuing to work as a reporter covering Walt Disney Co. and other Hollywood entities. He joined the Journal in 1995, initially covering the casino and hotel industries.
Bruce came to the Journal from the St. Paul Pioneer Press, where he worked from 1987 to 1995, and The Herald (Everett, WA) where he began his career in 1984. He is a graduate of the University of Washington.
Please join me in congratulating Bruce on his new role.
Al Jazeera hires biz journalist Meehan
by Chris Roush
Al Jazeera America has hired former Thomson Reuters producer John Meehan to serve as senior executive producer of the forthcoming channel’s financial and business coverage, reports Dylan Byers of Politico.
Byers writes, “Meehan will also serve as senior executive producer for the new business show hosted by former CNN chief business correspondent Ali Velshi.
“‘This is a really exciting opportunity to reinvent the notion of what business news coverage in America can be,’ Meehan said in a statement. ‘Al Jazeera America’s business and financial coverage will be about the continuing economic challenges facing the American family today, rather than just the daily ups and downs of Wall Street and official statistics.’
“Meehan formerly served as the global executive producer at Thomson Reuters; over the years, he has been managing editor of Bloomberg Television, senior news editor at CNBC, and Paris correspondent for The Associated Press.
“Al Jazeera America is scheduled to launch later this year, but has yet to announce its leadership.”
Read more here. Meehan also worked at BusinessWeek magazine.
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.
Marketwatch EIC Krim named WSJ’s tech editor/SF bureau chief
by Chris Roush
Wall Street Journal managing editor Gerard Baker sent out the following staff promotion on Monday:
I’m delighted to announce that Jonathan Krim is appointed Technology Editor and San Francisco Bureau Chief for The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones.
In his new role, Jonathan will lead our global coverage of technology and drive expansion of tech readership around the world. The Journal’s unrivalled global reach makes us uniquely placed to produce the most comprehensive, lively and authoritative reporting of this most important business sector. From breaking news in real time on some of the best-known companies in the world to providing the most insightful analysis of where tech is headed to providing fast and in-depth reporting on tech finance and innovation, Jonathan will lead an expanded team to ever greater journalistic dominance.
Jonathan is an experienced journalist with a rich background in technology and general news coverage. He spent 17 years at the San Jose Mercury News in Silicon Valley, where, among other roles, he oversaw business and technology coverage. Among his many successes, he led prize-winning coverage of Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos’s international finances and the northern California earthquake of 1989. He also covered technology policy for The Washington Post.
Jonathan is a digital innovator and has successfully managed major online publications. Most recently, he oversaw Marketwatch, where, during his two-year tenure, site visits increased nearly 50%. Prior to his stint at Marketwatch, Jonathan was Deputy Managing Editor for washingtonpost.com and Senior Deputy Managing Editor for WSJ.com.
Jonathan will report to Dennis Berman, Business Editor for Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal.
