Talking Biz News

Information about business
journalism from the
Carolina Business News Initiative.

MarketWatch columnist Chuck Jaffe, a former president of the Society of American Business Editors and Writers, writes a column Wednesday about the demise of stock tables within newspapers. He notes that he went to a SABEW conference about a decade ago when he was with the Boston Globe where the topic was discussed. When he returned to the Globe, his boss the business editor said that the paper would be the last to drop stock tables.

On Tuesday, the Globe was the latest, but definitely not the last, newspaper to announce that it was cutting its stock listings printed every day in the paper.

Jaffe thinks this change has implications beyond newsprint costs and the amount of space devoted to business information in a daily newspaper.

He wrote, “But if the Globe’s move does sound the death knell for stock listings, the question — particularly for the diehards — is not just where will they get their news, but how that delivery of information will actually change their investing habits.

“It’s a process that most of today’s investors went through by choice, deciding they would give up stock tables for something more interactive and current. Investors whose paper drops the listings may be moved against their will.

“Talk to experts in behavioral finance and they make it clear that the way investors get information has a lot to do with the way they act on that information. During the bull market of the late 1990s, investors started watching business television programming, and liked what they were seeing so much as their portfolios grew that they started acting on the information more regularly.

“When the bear market arrived, people stopped looking because they saw blood every direction they turned.

“Today, investors have access to trading data in real time, but that doesn’t mean they know how to use it. Talking with several readers who I first met during my time at the Globe, the thing they say they will miss about stock tables is the timeless comfort they got from their daily checkups, without feeling any need or compulsion to trade.”

Read more here.

The San Jose Mercury News wrote an editorial about the recent appeals court ruling involving Apple Computer’s lawsuit attempting to force online news sources to divulge where they received confidential information about company products. An appeals court overturned a lower court’s decision, which would have forced the online news sites to divulge their sources.

The Mercury News editorial stated, “If allowed to stand, that ruling would have reduced business journalism to little more than the reprinting of press releases. Companies could have claimed trade-secret protections to threaten anyone who published information they didn’t want published.

“The San Jose-based 6th District Court of Appeal overturned Kleinberg’s ruling, and it extended the right to shield confidential sources to bloggers and online journalists. ‘The shied law is intended to protect the gathering and dissemination of news, and that is what the (online sites) did here,’ the court said.”

Read more here.

NBC chairman and chief executive officer Bob Wright was on “Your World with Neil Cavuto” today, according to Inside Cable News, and he said that he was pleased with the direction of business news channel CNBC.

Here is the transcript from Inside Cable News as it pertains to C NBC:

B. WRIGHT: Well, I have got to say, first of all, MSNBC and CNBC are doing much better. And CNBC is doing just fine. So…

(CROSSTALK)

CAVUTO: So, you are not planing any changes there?

B. WRIGHT: No. They`re — I mean, they have — they have really improved dramatically. And I`m very — I`m very pleased about…

(CROSSTALK)

CAVUTO: MSNBC and CNBC?

B. WRIGHT: Yes. The — the — the issue we have — the only real issue we have is — you know, is in prime time. And we know it. And we are putting a lot of resources and very, very good people. We brought a lot of new people into the mix, some…

CAVUTO: Right.

B. WRIGHT: … new producers and new talent and different directions. And, so, we just have to let it play out.

Read more here.

Matthew Flamm, a reporter for Crain’s New York, notes the troubles occuring at the Time Inc. magazine operations in a broad story looking at its strategy.

Flamm notes that advertisers have left Fortune and Money in the past year, but that things are looking up at the CNNMoney.com operation.

Flamm writes, “CNNMoney.com, which combines content from four business titles, has become the third-largest business portal, up from eighth place, since launching in January.”

Read more here.

In an interview with the Associated Press, “Mad Money” host Jim Cramer advises his watchers to be patient with the stock picks from his show.

Cramer told The Associated Press he repeatedly warns his audience to steer clear of after-hours trading, when he says buyers outnumber sellers, making it easier to get burned.

“The takeaway of show shouldn’t be whether you made money in a 24 hour period,’ Cramer said in the story. The study “basically agreed with what I say every night, which is ’Please wait. Please do your homework.’ There is a responsibility on people watching the show and there really isn’t a rush to buy things.” Still, Cramer also said he doesn’t see a need to wait much more than a day to act.

The story also said, “Importantly, the researchers didn’t pass any judgement on Cramer’s stock-picking prowess or concern themselves with the longer-term performance of the companies.

“The main lesson is that those who believe Cramer’s insight is valuable may do themselves a favor by stepping back and waiting for the initial storm of activity to blow over. Any gains to be had with his recommendations will only be enhanced by avoiding a costly mad rush to follow the Mad Money.”

Read more here.

Senior technology writer David Hayes wrote his last Bits & Bytes column in the Kansas City Star in Tuesday’s paper, according to a note at the end of the column. Hayes, however, will write a different column in the Sunday newspaper.

Hayes writes, “Bits & Bytes disappears after today’s column, but I won’t. Starting June 11, I’ll be writing a new personal technology column that will appear Sundays in the revamped MoneyWise section.

“If you have issues you would like to see addressed in a column that deals with technology, computers gadgets and the like and how we use them, I would like to hear from you. Please send me an e-mail.

“We also will be plugging plenty of local tech news into the revamped Tuesday Business section.

“In the meantime, thanks for reading.”

Read more here.

The Business Journal of Tri-Cities Tennessee/Southwest Virginia has been sold to Mountaineer Publishing Co. of Waynesville, N.C., effective June 1.

In addition to The Mountaineer and The Biltmore Beacon, general circulation newspapers respectively serving Waynesville and Asheville, Mountaineer Publishing Co. owns and operates several full-color, glossy specialty magazines and publications in western North Carolina.

The Business Journal was founded in 1988 by Greeneville, Tenn.-based Jones Media, Inc., which publishes The Greeneville Sun, The Rogersville Review and several other general circulation newspapers and special-interest products in East Tennessee and western North Carolina.

Jeff Schumacher, general manager of Mountaineer Publishing, will serve as interim publisher of The Business Journal until a new publisher is named.

Ellen Myatt, who has been The Business Journal’s publisher since 1997, will continue with Jones Media and become publisher of The Rogersville Review in Rogersville, Tenn. All other personnel of The Business Journal will be retained by the new owner.

Read more here.

Outside of the state of California, which has the large CALPERS pension fund, I don’t see much, if any, coverage in the business section related to state pension funds. However, they are an untapped source of information, and stories, and business writers in every state should be cultivating pension fund managers who operate the state employees retirement system and the state teachers reirement system as sources.

A case in point is the story posted today on the Web site of my local newspaper, The (Raleigh) News & Observer. The state pension fund has decided to withhold its 11 million votes at tomorrow’s Exxon Mobile annual meeting to protest the exorbitant retirement package given the outgoing CEO.

Think about it. These penion funds own stock in dozens and dozens of companies. Many of them are investors in companies in the state in which they operate. And because many of them are state employees, they’re used to talking to the media.

See the N&O story here.

World-famous blogger and citizen journalist advocate Dan Gillmor has a great suggestion on his Center for Citizen Media blog. He wants to make the current stock option scandal where executives are receiving stock options back dated to the lowest stock price for their company a nationwide project for citizen journalists.

Gillmor suggests that stockholders/citizen journalists/bloggers do some simple research of local publicly traded companies, looking at their SEC filings to determine when stock options were granted and then compare that to historical stock prices.

He writes, “In relatively short order, I predict, the Journal and the cops on the financial beat would be well on their way to determining whether this is a scandal of limited scope or, as some fear, an all-too-common rigging of the system by the insiders against their purported bosses, the shareholders.

“I’d want the public database to show all companies, not just ones where the options dates are suspicious. I’m a shareholder in several public companies, and would like very much to know that the people running them are honorable, at least in this regard. I’d like even more to learn that we’ve already learned about the worst of this scandal, that it doesn’t go as deep as we might suspect.

“I suspect the Journal, which has a terrific collection of online resources already devoted to this story, will balk at the idea of putting the data online before the paper’s own journalists have vetted the data that comes in. In today’s litigious world, that would be understandable.

“But if so, I hope some other entity — perhaps a foundation or even another publication — will step up and do create this public database. It might be a good Wiki project, with some controls to prevent gaming by people who want to make unfair accusations or delete fair ones.”

Read more here.

Advertising Age is reporting that Wall Street Journal publisher Gordon Crovitz is working on a new version of the print edition of the paper.

Ad Age reporter Nat Ives writes, “Their plans are still evolving — 20 focus groups have been conducted, and another 60 are scheduled to take place once the next Journal prototype arrives in June. But one thing’s for sure: Journal 3.0 will take its cues from the Internet. The newspaper has run The Wall Street Journal Online for 10 years, and the new print edition takes into account how the Web version continues to change consumers’ expectations.

“And that reflects a growing and welcome effort among publishers to mine the particular advantages of Web surfing for application to the printed page.

“‘I’ve been saying this for a while now, but print — newspapers especially — needs to embrace marriage with the Web to remain viable and dynamic,’ said Eric Blankfein, senior VP-director of communication-channel planning at Horizon Media. ‘The fact that The Wall Street Journal is a successful paid site lends itself to the daily adopting certain elements in order to remain fresh. This is likely a good example of a newspaper merging assets in order to make both products more valuable to advertisers and readers alike.’”

Read more here.