How journalists can spot stories in data

Daniel Mark Harrison writes on his blog about how business reporters can increasingly find stories in data instead of having others point out the significance of the data. Harrison writes, “The purpose of this post is not to reveal what the results are – that would be writing the story, then, after all. Rather, it is to […]

Covering the GM airbag recall

Bob Goetz, assistant editor for the business desk of the New York Times, describes the all-hands-on-deck approach to presenting the months-long story on the greater impact of auto recalls by the paper in a Times Insider piece. Goetz writes: It was April, and for weeks, reporters including the Detroit bureau chief, Bill Vlasic, along with […]

Best Business Writing 2014 is now available

The Best Business Writing 2014, edited by Columbia Journalism Review’s Dean Starkman and Ryan Chittum, is now available. The anthology of the year’s best business investigative writing includes provocative essays on the ongoing collapse of American middle-class jobs under the weight of maximizing shareholder values (Washington Post); the underground networks of financial exchange that insulate […]

Insight: Covering Coach Yellen and the game of economics

Not many people would compare Federal Reserve Board chair Janet Yellen to New York Giants coach Tom Coughlin, but for Wall Street Journal chief economics correspondent Jon Hilsenrath that’s exactly what she is. And as the Federal Open Market Committee goes into the second day of its October meeting, Yellen and her team are gearing […]

The intersection of political and business reporting gains prominence

Media outlets are covering more stories that discuss the intersection of politics and business because of the financial crisis that the country experienced in 2008 and 2009, said Joshua Green, a senior national correspondent for Bloomberg Businessweek, on Tuesday. “Government is at the heart of global and U.S. financial health,” said Green. “My job is […]

A new way of covering corporate earnings

Marketwatch.com editor in chief Jeremy Olshan earlier this month told Talking Biz News that the financial news site was “experimenting with a better way to cover earnings seasons and the sometimes questionable pronouncements of CEOs, which will be a kind of corporate Politifact.” On Monday, Marketwatch posted a prototype of this new earnings story. The […]

How a business journalist can improve in social media

Sapna Maheshwari covers retail for BuzzFeed News, which launched a vertical for business news in May 2013. Before that, she worked at Bloomberg News from 2009 to 2013. Her first year was spent as a rotating reporter exposing her to a variety of topics including currencies, insurance and stocks. She then covered corporate credit before […]

Insight: Earnings season tis upon us

It might not have the cookies, Yule logs or man in a big, red suit, but earnings season is almost as good as Christmas for any business journalist. This week alone 60 companies are set to release their earnings, but that’s just the beginning of the festivities. One hundred and seventy-five companies are preparing releases […]

New to the job: The life of a young business reporter

Alex Dixon earned degrees in reporting and economics with a minor in creative writing from UNC-Chapel Hill in May 2014. He’s currently the only business reporter at The (Durham) Herald-Sun, a job he started in July. While a student, Dixon worked with publications including Our State Magazine, The Daily Tar Heel and founded Carolina Eats, […]

The only journalism that is really investigative is of the economy and finance

James Breiner writes on IJnet.com about Francisco Vidal Bonifaz, a Mexican business journalist who has worked in the field for three decades. Breiner writes, “‘Business journalism is a wonderful career,’ he says. ‘It has allowed me to live for many years in a very comfortable and respectable way. It is a type of journalism that […]