The Future Of Business Journalism

In the twenty-first century, business news has shifted its focus from local coverage to national news. In The Future of Business Journalism, Chris Roush shows the causes of this recent divide, its impact on local businesses, and how the field can once again provide the content a broad society needs to make informed financial decisions.

Business Journalism: How to Report on Business and Economics is a basic guide for journalists working in countries moving to open-market economies, students in journalism courses, journalists changing direction from general news reporting to business and economic reporting, and bloggers. It also explains the differences in technique required for general reporters to deliver business news for text, TV, or radio. Veteran journalist Keith Hayes, who has worked for such organizations as Reuters, PBS, the BBC, CBC, and CNBC, provides a quick reference to journalistic practice that covers everything from how to meet a deadline to getting answers from company or government officials who would rather not talk. It also provides background on specific knowledge that journalists should have to report on the business and the economy accurately and with insight. That includes understanding the major markets and how they work, learning to read a balance sheet, and getting the story even when a company or government sets up roadblocks. As Hayes demonstrates, effective journalists are story tellers who need to tell the story well while making certain they are providing the facts as they find them and understand them. Among other things, readers will also learn: How to write a business news story How to report business news on television How to report in a globalized business world How to get usable information from press conferences and briefings The basics of macroeconomics, the financial markets, and company-specific financial data How to dig for facts and get the story This book covers comprehensively the basics of business and economic reporting. With its insights and tips from Hayes and other veteran journalists, it’s a book that will remain on your shelf for years to come and help you acquire and cement career-enhancing skills. It will also help you hone your craft as you begin to write more sophisticated stories and take jobs of increasing responsibility.

The future of journalism is hotly contested and highly uncertain reflecting developments in media technologies, shifting business strategies for online news, changing media organisational and regulatory structures, the fragmentation of audiences and a growing public concern about some aspects of tabloid journalism practices and reporting, as well as broader political, sociological and cultural changes. These developments have combined to impoverish the flow of existing revenues available to fund journalism, impact radically on traditional journalism professional practices, while simultaneously generating an increasingly frenzied search for sustainable and equivalent funding – and from a wide range of sources - to nurture and deliver quality journalism in the future. This book brings together journalists and distinguished academic specialists from around the globe to present the findings from their research and to discuss the future of journalism, the shifting quality of its products, its wide ranging sources of finance, as well as the economic and democratic consequences of the significant changes confronting Journalism. The Future of Journalism details the challenges facing the press in contemporary societies and provides essential reading for everyone interested in the role of journalism in shaping and sustaining literate, civil and democratic societies. This book consists of special issues from Journalism Studies and Journalism Practice.

Foreword / David Callaway -- A Symbiotic Relationship -- The Business Model Failure -- The Dominators -- The Public Relations Factor -- The CEO Can Do Better -- Societal Changes and Economic Forces -- Political Polarization -- The Stock Market Is Overcovered -- Failing Employees and Consumers -- Health Care Coverage Is Sick -- Solutions to the Problem -- Using Technology to Improve Coverage -- The Education Imperative -- Fixing Business Journalism -- Appendix: Timeline.

Recognizing the historical importance of business news in journalism, this work asserts that current social attitudes were set in place by 20th-century reporting on finance, business trends, markets, unemployment, governmental economic policy, corporate malfeasance, and the consumer. A comprehensive look at the history of American business news reporting--from its conception to today's online news outlets--topics touched upon include breakthroughs in automobile safety; food and drug regulation; and response to problems of pollution, energy, and global trade that remain critical to debates of the future.

The business of journalism is widely held to be in a terminal crisis today, in particular because the rise of the internet has drained audience attention and advertising revenue away from existing media platforms. This book, the first systematic international overview of how the news industry is dealing with current changes, counters such simplistic predictions of the supposedly technologically determined death of the news industry. It offers instead nuanced scrutiny of the threats and opportunities facing legacy news organisations across the world in countries as diverse as the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Finland, Brazil, and India as they transition to an increasingly convergent media landscape.