Business Journalism & Globalization: Changing Quarterly Relationships
Thoughts on the relationships formed among the news, the newsmakers and the news gatherers.
Monday, April 30, 2007
Friday, December 01, 2006
Blog Reflection: Thoughts on the Experience
The purpose of this blog has been to serve as a depository of thoughtful ideas on current trends in journalism. New to the profession as an academic discipline, the first entries reflect my mild hesitance to claim authority in the field. As the duration of the course m

A self-critical summation of my work this semester leaves me with some successes and also with certain moments of ineptness. I will begin with the points make this blog strong. Perhaps the most appealing aspect of writing for this course has been the investigative stimulation some of the essay topics prompted. I am especially referencing the post entitled, “Maria Bartiromo: An Advocacy Statement for Her USC Honorary Degree,” where I raised issue with some of the university’s previous award recipients based on information I had researched. Although the intention of this blog was not to carve a niche into the blogosphere community, I am proud that another blogger deemed the required commentary I made on his site relevant enough for reciprocal feedback.
In terms of my efforts’ inadequacies, the most serious is my online writing style. In general, my writing is not conducive to suiting the tastes of online readers, who want succinct sentences. Many of the paragraphs of my posts are lengthy. Accompanying them are extensive sentences and complex ideas. With revision, some of these mistakes have been corrected. Without the constructs of the course and minimum word count mandates, I believe my adaptation to web publishing will continue to improve. Perhaps then I will make an impression on the online community.
Saturday, October 28, 2006
Maria Bartiromo: An Advocacy Statement for Her USC Honorary Degree
At the

Even in the recent past, USC has compromised the proclamations of its honorary degree criteria and its character by awarding such degrees to persons that were, at best, minimally qualified. In the last six years, the university’s website details 27 instances that such degrees were presented. The institution's decision to honor only four or five, sometimes even only two, persons indicates that there are few individuals it deemed worthy of the prestige of a doctoral level degree. The thought that the university regards degrees so preciously is soothing, but further examination of these individuals rais

While the university, as a private institution, is free to honor whomever it wants for whatever reasons it decides, members of the Honorary Degree Committee need to realize that presenting so many degrees to individuals that have financial and political connections to USC welcomes scrutiny. The university goes on in the Code of Ethics to say that it will “take appropriate steps to either eliminate such conflicts [of interest] or insure that they do not compromise the integrity of the individuals involved…” Although it would not be reasonable to expect the university to strip honorary degrees from its closest affiliates, the degree-granting committee should take less direction from the university’s administration and draw more upon other sources for recommendations. Since the committee is comprised largely of faculty members of various fields, the members’ colleagues and others they are acquainted with in academia would serve as excellent degree candidates. Interest groups made up of students, alumni and faculty members not represented by the committee would also generate appropriately qualified nominees. A coalition of these groups’ strong voices and the committee's support would effectively find the candidates the university claims it wishes to honor. In addition to consulting with interests on campus, the selection committee would do well to desist from honoring individuals that fit only the “Doctor of Humane Letters” designation, which generalizes candidates' accomplishments, denoting them an "outstanding citizen." The university should return to the practice of honoring persons in recognition of distinctions in science, literature, music, fine arts, and divinity, as well as award candidates of the laws category, which acknowledges persons that engage in outstanding public service.
The selection of Bartiromo for a degree would help alleviate the university’s propensity for abusing the tradition of awarding honorary degrees. There are many reasons for her candidacy. Beginning with professional esteem, Bartiromo is a model that many journalists should follow. Especially in the field of business journalism

Part of what keeps Bartiromo in the public spotlight has nothing to do with her reporting skills or substantial knowledge of the markets; some attribution of her status is due to good looks. Dubbed the “Money Honey” and “Econo Babe” by market players and fans, Bartiromo’s career arguably took off not when she began broadcasting the news, but the day when sh

Her celebrity status might be the deterrent that keeps the Honorary Degree Committee from selecting Bartiromo for the honorary degree, however. In contemporary society, degrees from prestigious institutions have become the social accessories that ensure prominent status. Universi

This recent scandal may prompt the committee to disregard Bartiromo from an award, but unlike Munitz’ power or other celebrities’ fame, it is Bartiromo’s skill that s

Although Bartiromo's formal business training is limited to the courses she took for an economics minor, this reporter knows financial news well because she is constantly asking market players – major or not – about it. Each morning and afternoon in the past, Bartiromo has prepped for her spots on CNBC shows by calling brokers and hedge fund managers, reading stories and studying reports. She does not shy from asking the top executives she exclusively interviews about pressing issues. Bartiromo has modified the shows she reports for, but not her strategy for asking questions. Her propensity for digging for information has led to controversy in the past. While she dined on invita

USC should embrace the Bernanke controversy as an illustration of Bartiromo’s dedication for repor

The university asserts its diligence to keep distant from conflicts of interest on the honorary degrees website, but as already discussed, has had troubles enacting that goal. The institution could look to Bartiromo as an exemplar in this respect. Like other business reporters who are often privledged to financial information before it is released publicly, Bartiromo would be governed by strict rules if she traded stocks because of Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) insider trading concerns. Reporters are legally permitted to invest and trade stocks, but Bartiromo restricts herself more acutely than either the SEC or CNBC does: she does not own shares at all. In her book, she "concluded that the best way to handle any confusion about [her] agenda was to not trade at all" (194). Although stock ownership is allowable if pertinent disclosure rules are followed, Bartiromo decides to circumvent any controversy, reasoning that her position and owning stocks "do not go hand-in-hand" (194). Martin notes that some hold the view that "moral ideals should essentially be relegated to private life, with professional life guided primarily by economic and self-interested values together with minimal moral restrictions" (12). With the information she receives, Bartiromo would be poised to add much wealth to her portfolio, but she cements her private life with her professional career and finds them to be inseparable. Bartiromo is unlike the professional Martin says the Wealth of Nations emphasizes, that which defines professionals as "driven by self-interest and not by moral values of caring about helping people" (13). Instead, she cements her private life with a professional career and finds them to be inseparable.
Since USC will continue to bestow honorary degrees upon individuals, awarding Bartiromo a degree would best serv

Monday, September 25, 2006
Changes in Online Journalism: Big Media Can Learn from a Student Effort

Online versions of newspapers, including those specific to the financial community, closely resemble their paper counterparts. Their layout functions much like conventional publications, with news links divided in a fashion that corresponds to formalized newspaper sections. According to the Web Style Guide – an online tool, similar to a style guide in the traditional book form, that suggests design and style guidelines for websites – leading “news sites have largely adapted the existing design genres of print newspapers and magazines to the smaller format of the Web.” Indeed, most online news sites have not strayed from the paper news’ formula. Citing The New York Times’ website as an example, the style guide observes that the online designs are “well-established print precedents.”
The Devil’s Tale does not suffer from this unfortunate lack of java creativity. Its staff has met the challenge of reinterpreting news form to better fit the context of the online realm. The staff's efforts to bring the publication to online readers have been met with such success that the site was a nominee in the student category of the 2006 Webby Awards. In fact, the site has completely reorganized the entire structure of its news links, evoking categories more over-arching than the historic news section titles that other online news sites have adopted. The Web Style Guide directs site developers to “arrange the content to best meet [the] audience’s needs.” Arranging its website according to “issues,” “people," "photos," and so on, the site is successful in its presentation of a sampler of topics that focus on terms more accessible to students than the usual journalism constructs of "local," "state," "world," or "politics." This theme of accessibility continues with the hyper textual links that display a picture and an enticing “teaser” lead upon scrolling over each article headline. Students would certainly be drawn to read an article whose teaser proclaims the nail technicians around their campus talk about clients while performing services. Teasers and other conventions of the site’s design require users to download a flash player, but the experience atypical of a news website remains unmitigated.
Although specific figures of the number of hits and time duration readers spend on the webzine’s site are not available, it is reasonable to surmise that The Devil’s Tale has claimed a portion of ASU’s news audience for itself. Perhaps the genesis of the project, the webzine has created an alternative news outlet to The State Press, ASU’s daily newspaper (which also posts its articles online) for the university community. While the Press' main focus is to report headline news of the day, the webzine has made itself appealing by producing “featurized,” non-breaking news content. The layout of the site resembles an interactive art magazine more than a staid newspaper formatted line-by-line. Some reasons for adapting this design from a conventional journalism layout probably came from pressure to attract more of the escalating numbers of people that read news online. The Pew Internet & American Life Project has recorded statistics in its "Usage Over Time" section that show in January 2005, up to 75 percent of men and 71 percent of women polled have gone online for news content – significant growth from March 2000 figures where 66 percent of men and 53 percent of women were online news readers. The Webby Awards considers site structure and navigation as criteria in its judging process, qualifying a successful site as one that conceives "a mental model of the information provided."
The Devil's Tale wants to engage the online audience rather than simply inform it. Evidence of this intent is witnessed in the site's reliance on large, moving tabs that organize topics by splicing news into categories previously discussed in this blog. After reviewing the site's divisions, the reader is not forced to scroll to choose a destination. Instead, the articles float towards him. In a movement that is not unlike a turning page, he is aware that he has chosen to enter a specific section and understands the identiy of it with a pertinent graphic. Through the site's archives section, it is observed that four of the five past versions of the webzine utilized a design with flashing pictures and headlines. Though the designs were still distant resemblances from other websites, flashing content revealed that their goal was similar: convince visitors of news' immediacy. Previous versions of the site were in denial of the non-breaking quality of their news. The current version discontinues the almost offensive flashing graphics and allows readers more direct control of the content that appears on their screens, increasing the site's capacity for reader interaction. Although this outline structuring of the site is quite engaging, the secondary destination pages - the webzine's news content - are limited in interactivity opportunities. Not intended to be maintained after the initial post, the website engages its readership with maps and quizzes in place of adding new pictures and user comment functions.
The site's content is a driving factor for its existence as a news website. One of the most significant portions of the site is its copy. Journalist Kanupriya Vashisht's first person prose declares in the lead of her article, "I had this urge to dive into a soothing mantle of silver stars." Almost every piece of journalism of the zine - including radio sound bytes - is written with the use of first person lead. Rarely does that voice fade into third person lower in the article. This "I" convention results in a fresh, compelling writing style that makes little application of journalism's staple inverted pyramid. Even some of the site's copy is presented with complexities not usually seen in news articles. "Dying for the Story," a specially-formatted piece by a group of journalists has interactive copy that differs on each page.
Equally important in communicating the essence of staff writers' stories are photographs, which are used extensively for both their news value and asthetic context, and thus appear on every page. They are sometimes irrelevant to the piece and fuction in roles that do more to identify the author, such as where Marilyn Hawkes pictures herself with her son in her article, "My Own Worst Enemy." The role of Shana Hogan's photograph of the Jerome Grand Hotel, placed in an article titled, "Spooked in Jerome," is one that aligns better with traditional photojournalism. A "photos" section on the site devotes space to photojournalism essays. A stimulating piece, "Through Senior Eyes," by Cronkite photographers documents the activites in which senior citizens engage themselves. As a collective body, the site's feature content inherent in its photographs and copy will likely interest students in issues confronting groups other than their own. The appeal of the webzine's content is its capacity to function almost as conceptual art. Without an action element and the fact that it is cirucularly cropped, a photograph of a bowl in Lindsay Walker's article about artifacts prompts more interest than a photograph adherring to photojournalism rules would.
Considerations of disseminating the news in the online medium are addressed by the webzine fairly conscientiously. The site’s approach to meeting the challenge of satiating erratic readers includes making use of traditional elements in print journalism – copy and photographs – as well as incorporating broadcast journalism’s video content and radio’s sound bytes. Perhaps unwittingly experiencing it, web surfers of ASU’s community are exposed to the site’s appropriate fusion of elements from various journalism mediums together with web design and java script to create a multimedia convergence experience. The integration of these animated elements - another of the Webby Award's judging criterion - adds significant value to the site's experience. In the "interactivity" section of the criteria, Webby Awards stipulates that "good interactivity is more than a rollover or choosing what to click on next; it allows... a user to give and receive." What the team of journalism students failed to adhere to were the guidelines of good copy editing present in the journalism fields they drew from to create this project. Grammar and AP style mistakes combined with a penchant to misplace quote markers and forget spaces between sentences has left the student effort with sloppy copy.
Sarah J. Ellis' article, "Route 61: A Cultural Trip through Phoenix," describes a man as "Hispanic" instead of "Latino" as the AP dictates, while Marilyn Hawkes' leading character is a missed quoation mark. "Fab Frogs" by Rita Washko ends with a grammar error in a catchy sentence, "While this debates continue, nature’s canary is dying." Writer Anya Britzius' entire article, entitled "Home is Where the Mold is," is riddled with mistakes. She identifies the doctor she quotes throughout the article a total of four times. Britzius also commits another major print journalism mistake: each time she attributes a quote, she uses "says" instead of "said."
Comprehending that it is not excusable to publish improperly edited content, major news striving to break stories quickly also struggle to ensure their copy is properly edited before posting onto the internet. Working with softer deadlines than major media, The Devil's Tale staff should have corrected their errors, even if they were noticed after posting. While this issue needs attention, the webzine is plagued with a more serious violation of reporting procedures as some stories contain factual errors. In a piece by Kristin Curry entitled, “Drowning in Debt,” the student loan lender Sallie Mae is referred to as “Nellie Mae.” A major criticism of online news is its lack of authority. Content, the Webby Awards says, "communicates a site's body of knowledge." The copy mistakes the webzine's writers have made question this knowledge, an effect that hinders the progression of the site's credibility.
Other mistakes threaten to shed additional degrees of credibility the site won with its reportage and design. The website neglects to provide links to parent organizations that support it – the main university webpage or the school of journalism. By failing to thread these links into the site, the publication weakens itself in two key areas: it does not benefit from the established authority of these larger entities and places limitations on full inclusion in the online community. Fact boxes extraneous to individual articles are the only links that lend the zine any authority. Still, these links to recognized institutions substantiate the articles themselves. Their purpose is to ameliorate the use of first person in the articles, not provide definitive authority to the site. Even in trying to establish authority in this limited sense, the site struggles. The links the site does post are generalized and leave readers to peruse through them for applicable information. Some may argue that readers’ ability to conduct research themselves demonstrates one of the benefits of the online environment. Because the content of the news articles is based largely on personal accounts, this particular website would be stronger if it followed professional journalism’s lead and siphoned through the provided links to highlight specific information rather than generalizing sources.
While the webzine certainly does not aspire to position itself as a source for late-breaking news, it is difficult to glean exactly in what direction the publication wishes to journey. A visitor can understand that part of the site’s intent is to target a readership segment that is typically more or less unresponsive to the media through the use of a new technology form, but without a clear assertion of goals, the parameters of the project remain indistinct. An “About Us” page is the closest the pro
ject comes to explaining itself. The page’s link is included with every article on the site, but it functions as a temptress of readers’ curiosities. Interpreting the page’s title, one presumes that it would include an explanatory text about the group’s overall objectives and then might focus on individual reporters’ identities. This is not the case. Reporters are not featured on the site. Without the aid of job titles, one can only assume the students that appear are those occupying editorial positions. Even trying to find information about the site from external sources is not fruitful. An internet search for the webzine yields an article from The State Press entitled, “Journalism Class’ Site Nominated for Webby,” from an April 4, 2006 news article by ASU student Andrea Adams. Aside from reading the first few lines of the article the search engine provides, only those with an ASU user account may access it in full. To ensure a higher level of inclusion in the university online community, editors of the next edition of the webzine will certainly want to include an outline of the site’s intentions and lobby the school’s journalism department to link to the site.
Apart from a few criticisms, the site serves as an excellent experiment from which media organizations can model future versions of their own sites to better meet the needs of their readers. Some sites, such as the Wall Street Journal and Yahoo’s news service, partially attain this goal by allowing subscribers or registered users to customize the articles that appear with a personalized page. The Devil’s Tale is more successful in satisfying this directive; the entirety of the zine reflects a reorganization of a news site’s components, including writing style and the page's arrangement in an outline form. The webzine successfully targets its readership by meeting viewers' demands to provide information on topics highly relevant to them. Other sites would do well to follow the webzine’s initiative and maximize the internet’s capabilities to revamp news and the way it is delivered.
Monday, September 18, 2006
Media Conglomerates: Complicating the Journalism Business Model
The media market is plagued with conflicts of interest. As media outlets join together, conflicts tend to become enlarged rather than minimized. The intricacies of business ownerships and holdings often make it difficult for news organizations to even hope to deliver relatively un-biased news coverage to the public. Generally, the public thinks that private ownership of media outlets is better, as they offer more local coverage and seem to have a higher stake in local affairs according to Ian Walsh in his blog. In a September 14 blog post by Pastorius entitled, "Wealthy Muslims Urged to Buy Influence in the Media," the opposite interestingly is illustrated: an individual acts in a selfish fashion. In a response to this post, I have provided a comment questioning whether the public has considered that individuals also have hidden agendas, which may be linked to money or the distribution of their personal beliefs.
Regardless of the ownership group, a definitive business model prospers in the news world: ad-supported revenue. In order to maximize the profits collected from advertising, news sources strive to expo

Monday, September 11, 2006
Journalist-Source Relationships: Better Understanding is Needed

In a recent speech given in June to the New York Financial Writers Association, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Christopher Cox suggested that journalists’ jobs “would be a lot easier if lawmakers and regulators didn’t make things so needlessly complicated in the first place.” His statement, of course, is true: if financial journalists were not required to report conflicts of interest – whether those are their own, their employer’s or the company on which they are reporting – they would have an easier job. But would this forgone transparency benefit the public? No. In order to truly be informed and fully grasp a situation, the public relies on journalists to be faithful in communicating any underlying relationship. Journalists working in the business field have a heightened responsibility to accurately report these relationships as their articles influence a vast amount of market moves.
Effective business beat reporters need to cultivate relationships with sources closely connected to their stories. These almost obligatory relationships are often formed with company employees, employees of competitors and stock analysts. Each of these groups of sources has an underlying and often ulterior motive in providing information to journalists. Above all else, corporate employees, whether they are public relations spokespersons or the chairpersons of the board, seek positive coverage for their company. Analysts, removed a greater degree from the corporation, also must be scrutinized as their job depends on maintaining relationships with a firm. Seasoned journalists understand that analysts who issue very negative reports about a company may not be provided with non-public information anymore. Journalists also consult hedge fund managers as sources. CNN’s Lou Dobbs and Gene Marcial of Business Week, who have reported on the rumor-like status of stock takeovers and mergers in the past, have been accused of being baited by short-sellers. Once Dobbs or Marcial published a story about the stock and the general public enacted upon that information, short-sellers would sell off their stock and profit tremendously. While financial journalists on the whole are aware of the problematic partnerships they forge with sources, there are few alternative avenues to gather information needed for almost every breaking story.
The obvious violations of ethics and SEC mandates are easy to correct in business reporting. News organizations routinely will not allow a journalist with explicit conflicts to report on a certain company or business sector. These types of conflicts are usually those that the SEC rightly feels might encourage a journalist to report something that would directly affect a specific corporation’s stock, such as a spouse’s top position at a financial firm or involvement with a particular corporation as a stockholder. The more subtle journalist-source relationships are not as easily identified as potential conflicts of interest. It is the uncertain bounds of these relationships that the SEC and news organizations need to help journalists clarify.
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
Business Newswriting: Pre-Professionals Are Not Getting Adequate Training

Still, there is much lacking in business news. Enron functions as a prime example. Reporter Bethany McLean of Fortune Magazine and author of The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron, broke the Enron story after receiving a tip from an anonymous source who instructed her to review the balance sheets of this now infamous company. Sin

The great journalism institutions are not teaching what

Only at the graduate level do Medill and NYU offer a degree in business journalism. This garners applause. But wait – Medill reports that about twelve students a year elect to enroll in the program. This number, coupled with the fact that most professional journalists do not hold a graduate degree in the field, forces one to question how these schools can neglect to expose most of its student journalist population to business news?
Journalism schools are responding to the need for their students to have relevant training in the field in which they will report; some are adding courses in science reporting, including Annenberg and
Business journalists need a similar foundation to achieve success as liaisons in the field. Most business journalists are given their job title after having shifted from another journalism niche. Thus, they don’t often have the necessary business training needed to report on important players in the complex market. In the impossiby paced reality of the journalism world where one reporter must file in multiple media and do so with speed, even a basic understanding of business practice will undoubtedly aid in the elimination of some of the factual errors that unfortunately find themselves into news stories. Specific training in business practices will make journalists new to the business beat more than a simple reallocation.
Journalism programs at national universities, in their efforts to educate students across multiple media platforms, need to modify their curriculum to include programs in business writing and business practice. Universities will remember that journalists with ample background knowledge will be the most successful in informing the public of business issues. Poor business practices and the implications of market trends will not be interpreted by the public if journalists fail to recognize them correctly. Advances cannot be made in business journalism until its professionals are better equipped to adequately report on the field.