About
The Reynolds Center for Business Journalism
The Importance of Business Journalism
From the companies we work for, to the ones we purchase from, business impacts our daily lives. Businesses lobby congress, often successfully, to change policy on everything from healthcare to education. Businesses are at the core of our entertainment venues, retirement plans, and insurance policies. When consumers are misled, or merely, unaware about where their money is going, corporate scandals are inevitable.
Business practices and dealings don’t just impact the company and its employees. Reporting on the business world can highlight inequities in any number of industries that force the public to take notice and companies to make positive changes.
Business journalism is critical in keeping corporations accountable, exposing them when they aren’t, and keeping consumers informed. By having control over which topics to write about in business and economics, business journalists can shape the information the public has access to. Consider how new technology giants have radically transformed how we communicate. Incidents of misinformation spreading rapidly without this field of journalism, that speaks truth to and acts as a check on these uber-powerful companies, will have very real and dangerous impacts on all of our lives.
What We Do
The Reynolds Center for Business Journalism was established in 2003 with the goal of improving the quality of media coverage of business and the economy. Since then our mission has been to promote the importance of business journalism among journalism students, give journalists tools to improve their business coverage and help freelancers navigate working with a variety of publications.
Over the years the Reynolds Center has trained more than 30,000 journalists and educators through in-person and online training throughout the country. We have worked with a wide range of freelance writers and collaborated with academic professors and departments in order to continuously improve the quality of content we produce including ebooks, podcasts, and instructional fun videos.
The Reynolds Center is housed inside the Walter Cronkite School for Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. Every year the center funds three graduate students at the Cronkite School during the fall and spring semesters who contribute to the research, training, and journalism content the center produces.
Barlett and Steele Awards
The Reynolds Center hosts the Barlett and Steele Awards, which are named after the Pulitzer-Prize winning investigative team of Don Barlett and Jim Steele and honors the best investigative journalism in the country. Since 2007, three awards (gold, silver and bronze) have been given to journalists and news organizations ranging in size from local to international. Several of the recipients have gone on to receive a Pulitzer Prize for their reporting the following year.
In 2022, the awards will be expanded to separate national and international publications from local and regional publications. A gold, silver, and bronze award will be given in each of those categories. Additionally, an award will be given out for ‘Young investigative business journalist of the year’ to a young journalist who has shown their exceptional journalistic skills when it comes to better and more innovative business reporting.
Who We Are
