Magazine Should Stick to Business Journalism Basics

By Chris Roush
May 23, 2007

The debut of the new business magazine Conde Nast Portfolio means many good things for the business journalism field. It gives us another conduit for good business reporting, and it shows that the field is not dwindling, despite what many daily newspapers seem to think.

But I have a problem with what I read from the first issue.

The magazine focuses too much on the personalities within business and often reminds me of a lot of the fawning coverage that was prevalent in the 1990s. And as such, I fear that other business journalists will read the content and think that the field is going back to these types of stories.

You remember the 1990s, right? That was when a lot of us got caught up in the tech/Internet/telecom/CEO-as-rock-star craze and began focusing more on the people and less on the numbers.

And Portfolio has plenty of numbers in its stories, but it also has a lot of focus on the people and details that have nothing to do with business.

Take, for example, this paragraph from a story about a guy named Ryan Kavanaugh who helps fund movies:

"Red-haired and impish, the 32-year-old wore jeans, a wrinkled white dress shirt, and a pair of navy Converse sneakers. During lulls when documents were being printed, Kavanaugh played Blackhawk Striker, a computer game that he'd somehow figured out how to display on the room's 13-foot screen."

That's great detail for a novel. But in business journalism, it smacks of being too cozy with the sources, something we've gotten in trouble for in recent years. It also reminded me a little too much of stories I read throughout the '90s.

I think Portfolio will be good, if not great, for business journalism. It has hired some of the best reporters and writers and editors in the field.

But I also think it needs to stick to traditional nuts and bolts business journalism to build its reputation, not flowery writing.

Copyright © 2008 Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism