Tag Archives: Writing tips
Benign neglect among the Bancrofts
by Chris Roush
New York Times business columnist Joe Nocera writes Saturday about the “benign neglect” among the Bancroft family members that led them to sell Dow Jones & Co., the parent of The Wall Street Journal, to News Corp.
Nocera wrote, “Watching the family flail these past few months, one couldn’t help agreeing with Ms. Chelberg’s assessment: the Bancrofts simply weren’t capable of owning Dow Jones. They were barely capable of selling it. ‘We took from this asset, instead of giving to it,’ she said, speaking of the hefty dividend that cut into Dow Jones’s earnings. She, meanwhile, had spoken again to Mr. Buffett, who told her that Dow Jones would have trouble competing as an independent company. So did other experts she spoke to.
“She acknowledges that Mr. Murdoch could wreck the paper. ‘But that is a risk you would take with any new owner,’ she said. ‘He has a tremendous opportunity,â€? she continued, ‘and I don’t think he’s going to blow it. He’s going to put money in the company, he’ll grow the brand, and he can do things through his distribution channels we never could. TV? We lost that chance 20 years ago.’
“Was she happy Dow Jones had been sold? No, she said, but she had made her peace with it. ‘Ultimately, my love of The Wall Street Journal is what caused me to support the sale.’
“WHEN I went to see Mr. Murdoch the next day in New York, he succinctly made the point that Ms. Chelberg had been working toward the previous afternoon. ‘The first road to freedom,’ he said, ‘is viability.’”
Read more here.
Forbes needs a geography lesson
by Chris Roush
Jonathan Berr of BloggingStocks.com notes that a recent Forbes article mentions two cities in the United States that don’t exist.
Berr wrote, “Though I hate to spoil today’s company holiday at Forbes, there is a bigger issue at stake here. In today’s age of instant communication, readers need to be more skeptical now than they ever have been. Wrong information can be spread with an alarming speed.
“Should Forbes have caught these errors before the story was published? Of course. But the news gathering and writing process isn’t fool proof. Mistakes, though unfortunate, are unavoidable. No one is perfect.
“But what separates journalists from people who just post stuff is how they deal with errors when they are pointed out. I’ve contacted the reporter who wrote the story and will let you know if I get a response.”
Read more here.
Barron's writer needs to stop with Microsoft story
by Chris Roush
TheStreet.com’s Marek Fuchs wants to know why Barron’s writer Eric Savitz has written the same Microsoft story about the company still being a growth stock three times in the past three years.
Fuchs wrote, “The Business Press Maven has a couple of concerns here. These articles appear written from the same template, without enough new information to merit such repetition, especially this latest one.
“Stop the presses! A company stated publicly that it was still relevant! It is overkill, boosterism. Microsoft has a public relations department that takes care of that; it does not need outside help.
“All articles in this collection (maybe I should market a collector’s edition) start by talking about how Microsoft is misunderstood by investors before going on to make faintly similar cases for why the stock is … c’mon, everyone together this time … a growth stock.
“In his most recent love letter to Microsoft, Savitz leads by saying that, while not many professional money managers seem to agree, ‘the nattering nabobs are dead wrong.’
“Last year, Savitz opened by talking not about nabobs, but for variation ‘the cynics’ who thought Microsoft would keep ‘shuffling along.’”
Read more here.
by Chris Roush
Jeff Poor of the Business & Media Institute writes that the business media has all but ignored the fact that the Dow Jones Industrial Average broke the 14,000 mark for the first time earlier this week.
Poor wrote, “Katie Couric briefly mentioned it on the CBS ‘Evening News,’ and ABC ‘World News’ ignored it on July 17. The New York Times buried it on page 10 of the business section July 18.
“NBC ‘Nightly News’ was the exception – leading its broadcast with the Wall Street story which included an admission that ‘a lot more people than you would think’ are making money from the markets.
“‘Earlier this afternoon, when the closing bell rang on the opposite coast on Wall Street in New York, the Dow Jones industrials hit an all-time high, up again more than 20 points, to close painfully close to that 14,000 mark, having briefly climbed above it earlier in the day,’ said anchor Brian Williams.
“But media coverage of Dow milestones has been mostly pessimistic. Every time the Dow broke through a milestone – the 11,000 on Jan. 10, 2006 all the way up to its passing of the 13,000 mark on April 25, naysayers in the media cast doubt on the possibility of a continued climb.”
Read more here.
AME for business at Denver Post leaving for Bloomberg
by Chris Roush
Jeff Taylor, the assistant managing editor for enterprise and business at the Denver Post, is leaving the paper to become San Francisco bureau chief and enterprise editor for Bloomberg News, according to an e-mail from Post editor Greg Moore obtained by Talking Biz News.
Earlier this week, Moore announced changes on the Post’s business desk that included the addition of three new reporters from other parts of the paper.
“Jeff has been a sparkling performer here and I am so lucky to have lured him from The Chicago Tribune to join us nearly five years ago,” said Moore in his e-mail to the staff. “As the AMEÂ for Local News, Jeff played a critical role in helping us elevate our story telling and scope. He is one of the best journalists I have ever worked with and I will miss his talent and can-do attitude.
“A year ago, I asked him to take over a new role overseeing Business and Investigative Projects and we all know Business had a banner year. Now, before he leaves at the end of this month, he will be working overtime to finish two investigative projects he has nursed along the past year.”
The Post’s business section won four Best in Business awards from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers earlier this year for its coverage of the raids at the Swift meat plants. One Post reporter, Eric Gorski, who is now with the Associated Press, also won a Best in Business Award in the enterprise category, while columnist Al Lewis won in the column category. It also won in the breaking news and project categories.
Charges filed against former Boeing employee who was paper's source
by Chris Roush
Steve Miletich of The Seattle Times reports that a former Boeing employee who was a confidential source for the paper in stories about the company has been charged with downloading and stealing information off its computers that later appeared in the paper.
Miletich wrote, “Police also alleged in charging papers that information in the downloaded documents appeared in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
“Eastman said he did approach a reporter from the Seattle P-I about safety issues at Boeing but that the reporter was not interested. He then contacted Seattle Times reporter Dominic Gates. Eastman would neither confirm nor deny he provided any documents to Gates.
“Suki Dardarian, a Times managing editor, said, ‘The Seattle Times does not comment on who may or may not be a confidential source.’
“David McCumber, managing editor of the Post-Intelligencer, said his newspaper did not receive any documents from Eastman.
“Eastman, an 18-year employee who worked as a quality-control inspector at Boeing, was arrested at work in May 2006, briefly held in the King County Jail and fired about that time.”
Dow Jones union is going about this the wrong way
by Chris Roush
Forbes.com columnist Gary Weiss writes that the union that represents business journalists at Dow Jones & Co., the parent of The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s and Marketwatch, should not be bringing alternative bidders to News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch to the bargaining table.
Weiss wrote, “If IAPE wants to preserve the editorial independence of Dow Jones, it needs to oppose any buyer, not just any buyer whose name begins with ‘Rupert.’ This ‘anything but Rupert’ strategy could very easily backfire, when (not if, when) the post-takeover layoffs begin.
“If the person performing the layoffs is a supermarket or a vitamin or an Internet or a ladies-corset magnate, he could simply say, ‘I have to do this so that I could afford to save your blessed company from Rupert Murdoch.’
“Perhaps IAPE should take a train ride to Philadelphia one of these days, and think about what happens when amateurs buy newspapers. After the Philadelphia Inquirer was sold to local entrepreneurs, the aftermath included advertisements on the front page and plastering the name of a bank across the business section.”
Read more here.
Writing a business book about an unwilling subject
by Chris Roush
Tad Whitaker of the Marin Independent Journal has a nice story about Wall Street Journal journalist Julia Flynn Siler, who recently published a book about the Mondavi wine family but encountered a number of hurdles along the way.
Whitaker wrote, “Flynn Siler had always wanted to write a book and knew the Mondavi story had the makings of a great story. But she didn’t sign the contract until after hashing out the idea with her mom.
“‘It was a very big commitment because she had two children,’ Grant Flynn says.
“During the seven months in which none of the principal characters submitted to interviews, Flynn Siler traveled to Italy for background research on the Mondavi family roots, combed through tens of thousands of pages of legal documents and discussed sections of the manuscript with members of her writing group. It was a difficult time that tested her ability as a journalist.
“‘I was just hanging in there,’ Flynn Siler says.”
Read more here. The book, “The House of Mondavi: The Rise and Fall of an American Wine Dynasty,” came about as a result of an agent seeing a Journal front-page story Flynn Siler had written about the company.
Reuters beats WSJ on KKR story in terms of analysis
by Chris Roush
TheStreet.com’s Marek Fuchs took a look Thursday at company announcements near the July 4th holiday and decided that some of them were intentionally released at that time to decrease coverage.
With one story, a Reuters wire article explained the significance, while The Wall Street Journal ignored the issue.
Fuchs wrote, “But I do want to point out what a good basic job Michael Erman did on this holiday issue, when KKR, looking to fly its public offering under the radar to avoid all the hullabaloo of the Blackstone offering which, among other things, set Congress sniffing around. Anyhow, by seeing the announcement through the lens of its holiday eve timing, look at how Erman advanced investors’ understanding:
The relatively modest size of the offering and the timing of the announcement — late on the eve of the U.S. Independence Day holiday — suggested that KKR hopes that its IPO will be a lower key affair than Blackstone’s, which attracted unwelcome attention from Congress.
“Even Wall Street Journal partner breakingviews.com, which The Business Press Maven normally likes, mentions the Tuesday afternoon timing without spelling out anything about its significance.
“Investors, heed the difference: Erman took The Wall Street Journal to school.”
Read more here.
Praising WSJ coverage of sale of Dow Jones
by Chris Roush
Steve Coll of The New Yorker writes in the latest issue about the strong coverage in The Wall Street Journal about the sale of its parent company, Dow Jones & Co.
“The story was gang-tackled by six reporters and came furnished with the Journal’s mandatory scenes of business titans with murky motives negotiating in restaurants. The writers referred to their own company’s chief executive as Murdoch’s ‘dance partner,’ and noted, on the front page, the possibility of a ‘big payday’ for the boss following the sale.
“In all, the Journal’s coverage of the sale was a kind of prideful and impressive demonstration to Murdoch of the values, the talents, and the daring of the editors and reporters he will now have on his payroll. The subliminal question that the coverage seemed to ask was, Will Murdoch destroy the Journal? Will he undermine the paper’s values and call that ‘investment’?”
Read more here.