Visit our new site at BusinessJournalism.org
Reynolds Center Programs
Daylong Workshops
Online Seminars
One-hour Tutorials
Barlett & Steele Awards
Professors Seminar
Strictly Financials Seminar
Research
Covering Business
Starting Out
Business Writing
Business Design
Business Glossary
Ethics
Five Questions with...
Immigration Series
Business Journalism Resources
Job Listings
Academic Programs
Book Listings and Reviews
Scholarships
Calculators
Web Resources
Tutorials
Article Index
Workshop Registration
The Reynolds Center has announced its 2009-10 free workshop schedule.
Select a workshop and register from the drop-down menu below.
Online Seminars
The Reynolds Center registration for Fall 2009 free online seminars.
Hooked on Kindle
By Chris Roush
Tracking the Business Behind the Tomato
By Jonathan Higuera
Five Questions with Bill Choyke
By Jonathan Higuera
Finding the Economy's Silver Lining
By Dick Weiss
Double Whammy: Oil and Housing
By Jennifer Hopfinger
Creating a No-Spin Zone
By Chris Roush
Oct. 26, 2007
Business journalism, and business journalists, are falling into the same mannerisms that make covering so many companies an odious task.
What am I talking about? We’ve all covered companies that like to promote themselves, either with press releases or slipping an e-mail to a beat reporter with an interesting tidbit that can be developed into a story. These are the companies that love to see their name in the press, no matter what the news might be.
The agenda for these companies sometimes seems murky. Are they using the business reporters that cover them for some sort of ulterior motive that remains unclear to the journalist? I’ve often felt that way, particularly when it was a company that fed me a piece of information about a competitor, and even more so when the information was unsolicited.
Business news media outlets – and the journalists that work for them – are increasingly acting the same way, and that’s a shame. We’ve learned the worst of corporate America.
What I’m talking about is the ways that business media outlets promote themselves. CNBC and Fox Business Network are classic examples. They’ll issue press releases when they have exclusive interviews with some high-ranking corporate executive. Does anyone but those journalists who work there really care? It’s too much inside baseball, if you ask me.
And then there are the other things that business media do. They write about themselves and what they’re doing as if their publication was the only one that existed – and without much critical thinking.
A classic example of this is the recent redesign of BusinessWeek magazine – one of my former employers. An assistant managing editor of the publication gushed about the redesign as a revolution in the magazine world, but it’s been widely panned by most others.
That’s the kind of spin that most business journalists would jump all over if it came from a company they were covering.
So, let’s lay off the P.R. Business journalists should be above stooping to the same level as the companies we cover. Let your reporting and editing speak for itself.
Email this article
Copyright © 2008 Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism
The Reynolds Center has announced its 2009-10 free workshop schedule.
Select a workshop and register from the drop-down menu below.
The Reynolds Center registration for Fall 2009 free online seminars.
By Chris Roush
Tracking the Business Behind the Tomato
By Jonathan Higuera
Five Questions with Bill Choyke
By Jonathan Higuera
Finding the Economy's Silver Lining
By Dick Weiss
Double Whammy: Oil and Housing
By Jennifer Hopfinger
Creating a No-Spin Zone
By Chris Roush
Oct. 26, 2007
Business journalism, and business journalists, are falling into the same mannerisms that make covering so many companies an odious task.
What am I talking about? We’ve all covered companies that like to promote themselves, either with press releases or slipping an e-mail to a beat reporter with an interesting tidbit that can be developed into a story. These are the companies that love to see their name in the press, no matter what the news might be.
The agenda for these companies sometimes seems murky. Are they using the business reporters that cover them for some sort of ulterior motive that remains unclear to the journalist? I’ve often felt that way, particularly when it was a company that fed me a piece of information about a competitor, and even more so when the information was unsolicited.
Business news media outlets – and the journalists that work for them – are increasingly acting the same way, and that’s a shame. We’ve learned the worst of corporate America.
What I’m talking about is the ways that business media outlets promote themselves. CNBC and Fox Business Network are classic examples. They’ll issue press releases when they have exclusive interviews with some high-ranking corporate executive. Does anyone but those journalists who work there really care? It’s too much inside baseball, if you ask me.
And then there are the other things that business media do. They write about themselves and what they’re doing as if their publication was the only one that existed – and without much critical thinking.
A classic example of this is the recent redesign of BusinessWeek magazine – one of my former employers. An assistant managing editor of the publication gushed about the redesign as a revolution in the magazine world, but it’s been widely panned by most others.
That’s the kind of spin that most business journalists would jump all over if it came from a company they were covering.
So, let’s lay off the P.R. Business journalists should be above stooping to the same level as the companies we cover. Let your reporting and editing speak for itself.
Copyright © 2008 Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism