Tag Archives: The Economist
Top biotech writers named
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FierceBiotech, a web site that covers the biotechnology industry, has named its top biotech beat reporters.
They are:
1. Adam Feuerstein, TheStreet.com
Writes John Carroll of FierceBiotech: “While he doesn’t always get it right — and no one can — his analysis of these companies cannot be ignored. Few biotech writers have his grasp of the issues and his understanding of the key players. Feuerstein also has excellent sources on Wall Street to tip him off on key events. And woe unto the CEO that incurs his scorn, which is seemingly endless. No one delights more in calling out a CEO with feet of clay, which is why TheStreet is both respected and feared.
2. Matthew Herper, Forbes
Writes Carroll: “Knowledgeable, opinionated and a careful student of drug science, when Herper has something to say, he has an uncanny knack at zeroing in on the crux of every issue. “
3. Ben Hirschler, Reuters
Writes Carroll: “Hirschler can spot a trend better than virtually anyone else in this business, and he’s not the least bit reluctant to tell readers the bottom line on the news regarding critical data or a pending M&A move.”
4. Robert Langreth, Forbes
5. Derek Lowe, In the Pipeline
6. Andrew Pollack, New York Times
7. Ed Silverman, Pharmalot
8. Luke Timmerman, Xconomy
Read more here.
Seven classic bad calls in business journalism
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Charles Wallace of DailyFinance.com has compiled a list of the seven worst “calls” made in business journalism, further proof that business reporters should never get in the prognostication business.
Here is part of his list:
2.Time magazine anointed Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos “Man of the Year” on Dec. 27, 1999. Just a week earlier, Amazon stock hit a high of $113 a share. By Oct. 1, 2001 the stock was trading for $5.51.3. Time ran a cover story on June 13, 2005, called “Home $weet Home,” which explained “why we’re going gaga over real estate.” If you went out and bought a condo on that news, you could be underwater: Average house prices plummeted 28% in the ensuing five years.. (And TIme‘s cover this past Sept. 11, “The Case Against Homeownership,” may be a signal to buy.)
4. Time has also been behind the curve on the auto industry. Its Nov. 9, 1992, cover was entitled “Can GM Survive in Today’s World?” After that piece ran, GM stock rose 60%. This was followed a year later, in December 1993, by “Autos: Back on the Fast Track,” when the industry really began to run out of gas.
5. The Economist, ever the highbrow, can still be a contrary indicator. In March 1999, the magazine published a cover story headlined “Drowning in Oil.” “The world is awash with the stuff and it is likely to remain so,” the Economist predicted. At the time, oil sold for the rock-bottom price of $10 a barrel. It’s $83 today.
Read more here to find out who is No. 1.
Biz magazines outperform industry in third quarter
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TALKING BIZ NEWS EXCLUSIVE
The 14 business magazines that report advertising data to the Publishers Information Bureau outperformed the rest of the magazine industry, according to data released Monday that was analyzed by Talking Biz News.
The magazines reported a 7.9 percent increase in advertising revenue and a 5.4 percent rise in advertising pages. That compares to a 5.3 percent increase in ad revenue and a 3.6 percent increase in ad pages for the overall magazine industry.
Only Bloomberg Businessweek and Fortune reported declines in advertising revenue and ad pages for the quarter. The biggest gains were recorded by Black Enterprise, which saw a 39.9 percent jump in ad revenue to $8.25 million and a 45 percent increase in ad pages to 179.77 for the quarter, and Wired, which recorded a 45.8 percent increase in ad revenue to $20.9 million and a 32.8 percent increase in ad pages to 211.06.
Fortune retained its position as the business magazine with the most ad revenue — it had $50.8 million for the quarter. But The Economist sold the most ad pages, passing Fortune during the quarter. It sold 405.48 pages, compared to 398.44 pages for Fortune.
Forbes reported the strongest gains among the big players in the sector. It had a 6.9 percent increase in ad revenue to $42.4 million and a 0.7 percent increase in ad pages to 305.78.
By comparison, Bloomberg Businessweek reported a 5.2 percent drop in ad revenue to $33 million and a 9.3 percent drop in ad pages to 244.64. Fortune reported a 2.3 percent drop in ad revenue and an 8.5 percent decline in ad pages.
Among the personal finance magazines, Money reported the biggest increase in ad revenue — up 7.6 percent to $30.2 million — while Kiplinger’s Personal Finance had the biggest gain in ad pages — up 2.5 percent to 64.31.
Barron’s recorded strong gains as well. Its ad revenue rose 22.5 percent to $10.8 million, and its ad pages rose 16.2 percent to 229.34.
See all of the data here.
Economist, Businessweek, Harvard Business Review win Olin prizes
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The Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis announced the winners of the first Olin Corporate Strategy Prize honoring the best business journalism covering a company experiencing significant strategic change.
The business school hopes the annual prize will help to expand awareness and understanding among business school students and the general business public about the importance of successful strategic change to the ongoing vitality and competitiveness of the firm.
The winners of the 2010 Olin Corporate Strategy Prize are:
1st prize: “The World According to Chambers,” a profile of Cisco Systems by Ludwig Siegele, technology correspondent at The Economist.
2nd prize: “The Transformer: Why VW is the Car Giant to Watch,” a profile of Volkswagen by David Welch, Detroit bureau chief at Bloomberg Businessweek.
3rd prize: “How GE Teaches Teams to Lead,” a profile of General Electric by Steven Prokesch, senior editor at Harvard Business Review.
“This new prize provides a wonderful opportunity for the worlds of academia, business and media to intersect,” says Mahendra R. Gupta, PhD, dean of the Olin Business School and the Geraldine J. and Robert L. Virgil Professor of Accounting and Management, in a statement. “It allows us to spotlight today’s best reporting on leaders who are managing strategic change and to share those examples with our students who are tomorrow’s business leaders.”
The Olin Corporate Strategy Prize grants honorariums of $5,000 to the first prize winner, $3,500 to the second prize winner and $1,500 to the third prize winner. Submissions were received from leading business publications worldwide and judged by a distinguished panel of leading journalists, journalism professors, business leaders and faculty.
Read more here.
Economist to launch iPad, iPhone apps later this year
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Rob O’Regan of EMedia Vitals reports that The Economist will launch iPhone and iPad applications later this year.
O’Regan writes, “The goal of the new apps is to replicate the magazine experience, while taking advantage of the devices’ unique features. ‘As closely as possible, we want it to feel like you’re reading The Economist in print,’ said Oscar Grut, the Economist Group’s managing director of digital editions.
“Grut believes the iPad and other e-readers like the Kindle offer an opportunity to replicate the lean-back experience of the print magazine.
“‘The strong message we’re seeing is that people are using these devices in a completely different way than they use desktops,’ he said. ‘We’re seeing increasing evidence of the enjoyment people derive from reading on these devices. For us it’s a complete departure from the old world of digital. It’s much more like print.’
“Which, of course, plays right into the type of analytical, long-form journalism The Economist offers.”
Read more here.
Selling the Economist to new U.S. readers
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Jeremy Peters of the New York Times writes about The Economist, which is looking for new subscribers in markets across the United States.
Peters writes, “About four years ago they began focusing on large urban areas like Austin, Seattle, San Francisco and Washington, places that also happen to have well-educated populations that are likely to find The Economist’s global perspective appealing.
“The magazine’s branding executives have also carefully selected what stores can carry it, and not just any supermarket or general merchandise store will suffice. Two they selected were Whole Foods, the high-end, high-price organic food chain, and Costco, a warehouse club.
“‘Whole Foods is actually a psychographic, not a demographic,’ said Paul Rossi, The Economist’s managing director and executive vice president for the Americas. ‘One of the things people say is, ‘You go after an affluent audience.’ But we don’t define our audience by their demographic. We define our audience based on what they think.’
“He said that above all else the magazine’s marketing tries to stir intellectual curiosity. But he acknowledged that some will inevitably see The Economist as a status symbol. ‘For some people it will be a badge, for some it won’t,’ he said, adding that the magazine does not intentionally shoot for that image. ‘If we ever started to market ourselves to be cool, it would fail.’”
Read more here.
The Economist hiring in North America
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Jason Fell of Folio reports that The Economist is now looking to add roughly 20 positions onto several others it has hired so far this year.
Fell writes, “The new jobs are primarily in sales, marketing and technical operations. Some titles include a global publisher partnerships director, a director of traffic and lead generation, and a Drupal developer.
“According to Alan Press, senior vice president of marketing and new ventures for The Economist Group, the new positions are part of a larger strategy to grow and expand The Economist brand. ‘As the company expands and moves in different directions, these are some of the areas that will help support those efforts.’
“Press says The Economist, which currently employs about 200 people in North America, added jobs to its Brand Innovation Business earlier this year and has hired other positions, including a senior director of new ventures, a commercial director, a director of new programs and an editorial director.”
Read more here.
Biz magazines outperform industry in second quarter
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TALKING BIZ NEWS EXCLUSIVE
The 14 business magazines published in the United States outperformed the overall magazine industry in the second quarter in terms of advertising revenue and ad pages.
The financial and business magazines reported ad revenue of $328.1 million in the second three months of the year, up 11.3 percent from the same quarter in 2009. In comparison, the overall industry was up 5.7 percent.
In terms of ad pages, the business titles reported an 8.3 percent to 3359.42 pages, while the overall industry was up 0.3 percent, according to data published Monday from the Publishers Information Bureau and analyzed by Talking Biz News.
The comparison data excludes Fortune SmallBusiness and Conde Nast Portfolio, both of which were published in the second quarter of 2009.
The best performer among the business titles was Time Inc. personal finance glossy Money, which reported a 37.5 percent rise in ad revenue to $34.2 million and a 32.3 percent jump in ad pages to 164.77.
Another strong performer was Wired. The Conde Nast tech-related magazine reported ad revenue of $19.6 million, up 37.7 percent, and ad pages of 200.13, up 26.2 percent, for the quarter.
Dow Jones & Co. title Barron’s also performed well, reporting a 32.9 percent increase in ad revenue to $15.5 million and a 26.5 percent increase in ad pages to 335.52.
Among the large business titles, Bloomberg Businessweek performed the best, with an 11.2 percent increase in ad revenue for the quarter, to $48.8 million, and a 10 percent increase in ad pages to 365.01.
Forbes was the only business title with a decline in ad revenue — down 1.7 percent to $61.9 million — for the quarter. Forbes, Fortune and the Economist reported declines in ad pages.
Economist cover brushes out others standing with Obama
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Jeremy Peters of the New York Times notes Monday that the June 19 cover of The Economist showing President Barack Obama standing alone at the Gulf oil disaster had been changed.
Peters writes, “?The problem was, he was not actually alone. The photograph was just edited to make it look that way.
“The unaltered image, shot on May 28 by a Reuters photographer, Larry Downing, shows Adm. Thad W. Allen of the Coast Guard and Charlotte Randolph, a local parish president, standing alongside the president. But in the image that appeared on The Economist’s cover, Admiral Allen and Ms. Randolph had been scrubbed out, replaced by the blue water of the Gulf of Mexico.
“When it comes to its own photographers, Reuters has stringent standards regarding photo editing. ‘Reuters has a strict policy against modifying, removing, adding to or altering any of its photographs without first obtaining the permission of Reuters and, where necessary, the third parties referred to,’ Thomson Reuters said in a statement on Sunday.
“Editors from The Economist had no comment when asked on Friday about the cover image.”
The job of economics writers??
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Ryan Avent, who writes the “Free Exchange” blog for The Economist, has a commentary Monday where he ends with a statement about the role of economics writers.
“It’s not the job of the economics journalist to take that as a given and declare that America will have to muddle through. It’s their job to correctly identify the problem, and name the names of those causing it.”
Kevin Drum of Mother Jones replies, “But while columnists certainly have a responsibility to explain political realities to their readers, they have an even stronger responsibility to explain the economic realities as they see them. If they legitimately think there’s nothing more that can be done, fine. But if they don’t, they shouldn’t use politics as a cover for throwing up their hands. The federal government can’t wave a magic wand and make everything OK, but there are still plenty of things left in its armory. We don’t have to accept 8-10% unemployment for the next four years if we don’t want to.”