How Could 9,000 Business Reporters Blow It?

[Joanne98]

A former Wall Street Journal writer dissects why business reporters bought the bull—and missed the biggest story on their beat.

—By Dean Starkman

January/February 2009 Issue

for casual readers of business coverage—that is, most of us—the past 18 months have been a crash course in things we never knew existed but that, we are told, have already done us all irreparable harm. Not only are the problems catastrophic, goes the somewhat frustrating message, but it is already too late to do anything about them—other, that is, than pay for them.

In looking back on how we got here, the business press assumes a tone of rueful omniscience, as in this late-2007 New York Times piece on regulatory laxity under Alan Greenspan: "Had officials bothered to look, frightening clues of the coming crisis were available." Of course, the clues the Times cites in the very next sentence—the ceaseless research of the North Carolina-based Center for Responsible Lending—were available had anyone bothered to look. So, a reader might well ask, why didn't the media?

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2009/01/how-could-9000-business-reporters-blow-it

[Warpy]

1. That isn't how the game is played

Reporters no longer look for stories, they interview people who themselves become the stories.

It's an important distinction and one to remember every time the media blow it bigtime. They're looking for official spokesmodels. The story isn't important. The quotes are.

That's the major reason our media are worthless.

[barb162]

4. And they don't ask tough questions anymore.

The "reporters" these days are mostly fawners.

[Turbineguy]

2. Well at least they were cheerleading

to keep suckers in the market for wall Street to fleece.

[lurky]

3. I place business journalism on a rung right below music journalism.

Fawning puff pieces on companies and executives, repackaging of corporate press releases, and mindless repetition of the latest conventional wisdom. I'm sure there are exceptions, but I haven't seen many.