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The Conference Board Review® Article
The Changing World of Business Journalism
By Jay Stuller
Jay Stuller is a veteran of both magazine journalism and corporate communications, and a contributor to this magazine since the mid-1980s. Perfect Power, his seventh book, co-authored with ex-Motorola chairman Robert Galvin and Kurt Yeager of the Electric Power Research Institute, will be published in August. He can be reached via www.jstuller.com.
"All of us learn to write in the second grade," basketball coach Bobby Knight once quipped, "but most of us go on to other things." While aimed at sportswriters, Knight's insult likely evokes empathetic laughter from executives, many of whom think much the same of journalists attempting to cover their company or industry. As someone who earns a living in the discipline of writing — and who in the past endured plenty of rants from high-school and college basketball coaches — I'm less amused. The dynamics behind Knight's remark, however, are fascinating. Americans may be reading fewer daily papers, and our attention spans may be shrinking, but we continue to rely on writers.
Along with supplying citizens with useful information on vital issues, news organizations serve as a check on abuses of power that law enforcement might overlook, including misdeeds in government, by the clergy, and, of course, by business. An upbeat CNN spot about a new product can boost a company's reputation with customers and investors, while a Bloomberg exposé about toys colored with lead paint — or a revelation of suspicious disclosures buried in an 8-K that's filed late on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving — can do almost irreparable harm.
It's no wonder that executives cast a gimlet eye toward business journalists and, like Knight, resent challenging questions and the power of the pen in the hands of lesser mortals who've never coached the game or taken responsibility for a bottom line. In turn, relatively few executives fully understand or appreciate a reporter's role, motivations, and responsibilities.
Meanwhile, these same journalists are on the front lines of a multibillion-dollar industry that's currently undergoing profound change. Business sections of local and metropolitan newspapers are shrinking or disappearing altogether. Thinly staffed publications and local TV news departments now send general-assignment reporters to cover complex business developments, with little background or preparation. Rupert Murdoch's plans for molding his recently purchased Wall Street Journal into a daily paper that competes directly with The New York Times has reportedly left staffers at the august WSJ — which has long defined rock-solid business reporting — uncertain about what should be covered and how.
One can rightly also ask whether the tsunami of raw and rapid-fire information on scoop-oriented "insider" business blogs and sound-bite-addicted cable TV channels is supplanting conventional journalism, and whether the emphasis on quantity and brevity compromises understanding. Has society and the profession unraveled to the point where Mad Money's manic Jim Cramer — arguably perched at a far end of the journalistic continuum — has an influence equal to that of the latest issue of Fortune? These are frightening thoughts indeed. Boo-yah, as Cramer might say.
Comments? Write a letter to the editor.
Return to the July/August 2008 The Conference Board Review® issue.
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