Tech reporters are a breed of their own, with a distinct set of skills, knowledge and experience. In this primer, G. Pascal Zachary, who reported on Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury and The Wall Street Journal, gives us the basics.
News has been coming thick and fast the last few weeks, so you might have missed the uproar over the coal ash spill in North Carolina. According to the Raleigh News & Observer, coal ash – a byproduct of burning coal for energy production – escaped from a Duke Energy storage facility on Feb. 2 [...]
Recent news of a study that casts doubt on the life-saving value of mammograms is a huge health science story — fueling more intense debate about the tests’ role in detecting breast cancer at treatable stages — but it’s also a pretty big business-of-healthcare story you may wish to follow up on, as well. To [...]
It’s been a rough few months for consumers. First, millions learned that shopping at their friendly discount store – or upscale department store – may have exposed their financial information to overseas hackers. That series of incidents – on top of drumbeat headlines about government spying and invasion of privacy – has percolated fears about [...]
The old Bulgarian term for February was “month of dreadful ice” and while that may be true meteorologically, especially this year, it’s a hot-hot-hot little 28 days for news pegs. In addition to the just-past Super Groundhog Day, and Valaentine’s Day (also known this year as Val-Pres weekend due to its confluence with the President’s [...]
We all know those topics or fields, like “supply chain logistics” and “corporate governance” that due to their unfortunate nomenclature, start the eyes glazing over before the final syllable is typed. Which is a shame, because they and many other boring-sounding matters actually can be the source of some compelling stories. Same with “net neutrality,” [...]
The story merchants wish would go away actually just got bigger, with Target admitting that far more customers than earlier reported had been victims of its data breach, and as CNBC reports, it’s still a mystery as to exactly what database was hacked, since information not encoded onto debit and credit cards, like e-mail addresses, [...]
In addition to “Auld Lang Syne,” the Rose Bowl and diet resolutions, one of the rituals of early January is the big gadget convention in Las Vegas produced by the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA). The International CES (formerly known as the “Consumer Electronics Show”) is a four-day extravaganza of new product launches, hundreds of speeches [...]
This post follows Melissa’s post yesterday on Brainstorm 2014 story projects before opportunities slip away. Today she offers a brainstorming checklist. One great thing about being a business journalist: Never any shortage of news. Other beats might hit seasonal doldrums or dry spells, but the world’s financial and economic engines always are serving up something [...]
Retailers like to make headlines in December — but for triumphs like double-digit sales increases, not the security fiasco that discounter Target is red-faced over in the final crucial shopping days before Christmas. News that hackers may have been picking off data from tens of millions of shopper credit cards for weeks on end is [...]
