It seems that the ultimate downside of getting rid of stock agate is that it has downgraded business sections. I just heard from biz ed Karen Miller that the Reading (PA) Eagle has moved its business section inside the paper most days. Yes, behind Sports once again.
And of course, now business staffs are disappearing into the metro fold, as has happened at the Indianapolis Star and Honolulu Advertisers. Of course, this might also infuse more economics into metro coverage, but my concern is that real coverage of business will be lost in favor of a beefed up metro team.
Another trend is for business editors to move into the digital ranks. Russ Stanton of the LATimes moved from business editor post to the new job of Innovation Editor, responsible for a digital thinking at the Times. And I just heard that Jeff Platsky, longtime award-winning biz editor in Binghamton, is moving to a new Digital Editor position at PressConnects, the paper's digital arm. It's possible his old business staff will be absorbed into metro as yet another Gannett paper reshapes itself.
Why does it seem that business editors make the digital turn faster than others in the newsroom? First, the demand for timely business news has always met that biz editors got the need for speed in an online environment. Business news has a lot of models for converged publications such as Bloomberg, Reuters, BusinessWeek and Marketwatch. Even luddite newspapers put stock quotes on telephone service or on the web before they moved other news to it.
Stay tuned, the changes in business sections -- moving inside or going away -- will be the talk of 2007.
--Marty Steffens
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Business news, once again, is change agent
We've often said that business news is helping to drive the move to converged news models. Bloomberg, Reuters, Marketwatch, BusinessWeek, MSN Money and others have run multimedia operations for years.
Now business news is once again a catalyst for change in how we look at counting the number of visitors to websites. Finance users, like those who use Yahoo! Finance, view pages over long periods of time -- if an investor is using it to track a moving stock, the page might be up during the entire trading day -- yet be counted only as one page view. Talk about "sticky!"
The financial web client is a high-value target for advertisers, and new measurements must come into play to monetize business news web sites. Do check out a great piece on this issue by AP Internet Writer Anick Jesdanun. Here's the link:
http://www.suntimes.com/technology/254637,CST-FIN-webads13.article
--Marty Steffens
Now business news is once again a catalyst for change in how we look at counting the number of visitors to websites. Finance users, like those who use Yahoo! Finance, view pages over long periods of time -- if an investor is using it to track a moving stock, the page might be up during the entire trading day -- yet be counted only as one page view. Talk about "sticky!"
The financial web client is a high-value target for advertisers, and new measurements must come into play to monetize business news web sites. Do check out a great piece on this issue by AP Internet Writer Anick Jesdanun. Here's the link:
http://www.suntimes.com/technology/254637,CST-FIN-webads13.article
--Marty Steffens
Business news, once again is change agent
We've often said that business news is helping to drive the move to converged news models. Bloomberg, Reuters, Marketwatch, BusinessWeek, MSN Money and others have run multimedia operations for years.
Now business news is once again a catalyst for change in how we look at counting the number of visitors to websites. Finance users, like those who use Yahoo! Finance, view pages over long periods of time -- if an investor is using it to track a moving stock, the page might be up during the entire trading day -- yet be counted only as one page view. Talk about "sticky!"
The financial web client is a high-value target for advertisers, and new measurements must come into play to monetize business news web sites. Do check out a great piece on this issue by AP Internet Writer Anick Jesdanun. Here's the link:
http://www.suntimes.com/technology/254637,CST-FIN-webads13.article
--Marty Steffens
Now business news is once again a catalyst for change in how we look at counting the number of visitors to websites. Finance users, like those who use Yahoo! Finance, view pages over long periods of time -- if an investor is using it to track a moving stock, the page might be up during the entire trading day -- yet be counted only as one page view. Talk about "sticky!"
The financial web client is a high-value target for advertisers, and new measurements must come into play to monetize business news web sites. Do check out a great piece on this issue by AP Internet Writer Anick Jesdanun. Here's the link:
http://www.suntimes.com/technology/254637,CST-FIN-webads13.article
--Marty Steffens
Thursday, February 8, 2007
New twist on Googling yourself...
Okay, we admit it. We've all "Googled" ourselves.
Many of us have typed our names into multiple search engines to discover just what personal asteroids are orbiting in cyberspace. It usually yields a surprise -- like the photo I found of my lecture in Taichung, Taiwan, on enviro-business journalism.
Today, while researching a fellow journalist who's going to be a guest speaker in my business journalism class, I typed his name into Scholar.Google. Up popped pages of scholarly work where the academic author had cited news stories that he had written. This journalist, a magazine author, was cited in dozens of journals and conference papers, on topics ranging from Artificial Intelligence to Economic Reform.
So I Scholar-Googled myself and found where I'd been thanked or cited in some books, as well. Some I knew about, others were a big surprise.
So, fellow journalists, if you want to see when and where your journalistic work has been cited, just call up www.scholar.google.com and search away.
--Marty Steffens
Many of us have typed our names into multiple search engines to discover just what personal asteroids are orbiting in cyberspace. It usually yields a surprise -- like the photo I found of my lecture in Taichung, Taiwan, on enviro-business journalism.
Today, while researching a fellow journalist who's going to be a guest speaker in my business journalism class, I typed his name into Scholar.Google. Up popped pages of scholarly work where the academic author had cited news stories that he had written. This journalist, a magazine author, was cited in dozens of journals and conference papers, on topics ranging from Artificial Intelligence to Economic Reform.
So I Scholar-Googled myself and found where I'd been thanked or cited in some books, as well. Some I knew about, others were a big surprise.
So, fellow journalists, if you want to see when and where your journalistic work has been cited, just call up www.scholar.google.com and search away.
--Marty Steffens
Wednesday, February 7, 2007
Carl Schramm on business journalism
The president of the Kauffman Foundation, the Kansas City-based "think-farm" that promotes and funds research into entrepreneurism, stopped by the University of Missouri campus Tuesday to talk to econ students and faculty.
Carl Schramm has a new book, "The Entrepreneurial Imperative: How America's Economic Miracle Will Reshape the World" (Collins, 2006). It's a sweeping look at a post-Keynesian world, and how entrepreneurism drives a new economic model. Schramm has strong views on immigrations -- for the most part, it should be unfettered. But he goes a step further and advocates that any non-citizen who earns a PhD in a U.S. university should immediately be offered citizenship. He believes that U.S.-educated foreign nationals, especially if they experience entrepreneurism while on campus, will spread this form of individual freedom when they return to their home country.
Later, in a one-on-one, we talked about the role of business journalists. Schramm feels that journalists don't really understand statistics, or economic fundamentals. He's often chagrined (my word) by misleading and mischaracterized statistics in the press. He also believes that reporting on underlying economic issues is shallow.
My recommendation? At 187 pages, Schramm's book is worth putting on the bedstand for a quick read, especially if you are a fan of Tom Friedman's, "The World is Flat."
--Marty Steffens
Carl Schramm has a new book, "The Entrepreneurial Imperative: How America's Economic Miracle Will Reshape the World" (Collins, 2006). It's a sweeping look at a post-Keynesian world, and how entrepreneurism drives a new economic model. Schramm has strong views on immigrations -- for the most part, it should be unfettered. But he goes a step further and advocates that any non-citizen who earns a PhD in a U.S. university should immediately be offered citizenship. He believes that U.S.-educated foreign nationals, especially if they experience entrepreneurism while on campus, will spread this form of individual freedom when they return to their home country.
Later, in a one-on-one, we talked about the role of business journalists. Schramm feels that journalists don't really understand statistics, or economic fundamentals. He's often chagrined (my word) by misleading and mischaracterized statistics in the press. He also believes that reporting on underlying economic issues is shallow.
My recommendation? At 187 pages, Schramm's book is worth putting on the bedstand for a quick read, especially if you are a fan of Tom Friedman's, "The World is Flat."
--Marty Steffens
Tuesday, February 6, 2007
The blending of business and lifestyle news
The line continues to blur between business and lifestyle pubs.
The latest copy of KCB -- short for Kansas City Business -- just landed on my desk. The glossy mag covers CEOs, workplace issues and economic development in a narrative or issues format. It debuted in July, and the February issue is devoted to "Green" issues in the region -- including how area ag companies are racing to harvest more corn for the ethanol boom.
We're hearing that KCB's parent company, Anthem Publishing, has more such publications in the works. Stay tuned for which cities and where!
Of course, blending lifestyle and business isn't exactly new. What's new is how far it extends into smaller cities. South Florida has a few notablel life/style business titles.
The 800-pound gorilla of business journalism, the Wall Street Journal, continues to move in this direction. The addition of color in 2002, accelerated the move. Personal Journal is now the best-read section with columns on wine, fashion and travel, as well as movie reviews. The lifestyle emphasis really takes over in the Saturday edition, which debuted in 2005.
What's driving this? The standard business advertiser, publicly traded companies, banks and financial instutitions, get skittish if the market turns bearish. By appealing to retail, travel and entertainment ads, these pubs broaden their ad base.
And of course, biz pubs have demos that make one drool. In 2005, the Journal's reader had an average income of $191,000, an average household net worth of $2.1 million, and an average age of 55. And of course, they are influential managers.
Anyway, now that mainstream newspapers have dropped most of the stock and mutual fund listings that defined their sections, look for them too, to blend biz and lifestyle.
-- Marty Steffens
The latest copy of KCB -- short for Kansas City Business -- just landed on my desk. The glossy mag covers CEOs, workplace issues and economic development in a narrative or issues format. It debuted in July, and the February issue is devoted to "Green" issues in the region -- including how area ag companies are racing to harvest more corn for the ethanol boom.
We're hearing that KCB's parent company, Anthem Publishing, has more such publications in the works. Stay tuned for which cities and where!
Of course, blending lifestyle and business isn't exactly new. What's new is how far it extends into smaller cities. South Florida has a few notablel life/style business titles.
The 800-pound gorilla of business journalism, the Wall Street Journal, continues to move in this direction. The addition of color in 2002, accelerated the move. Personal Journal is now the best-read section with columns on wine, fashion and travel, as well as movie reviews. The lifestyle emphasis really takes over in the Saturday edition, which debuted in 2005.
What's driving this? The standard business advertiser, publicly traded companies, banks and financial instutitions, get skittish if the market turns bearish. By appealing to retail, travel and entertainment ads, these pubs broaden their ad base.
And of course, biz pubs have demos that make one drool. In 2005, the Journal's reader had an average income of $191,000, an average household net worth of $2.1 million, and an average age of 55. And of course, they are influential managers.
Anyway, now that mainstream newspapers have dropped most of the stock and mutual fund listings that defined their sections, look for them too, to blend biz and lifestyle.
-- Marty Steffens
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