As mainstream media competes for eyeballs against bloggers and others in the new media environment, what is the role of Business Media in the current financial situation?

Larry Kramer moderated a panel at FOBM featuring an anchor, managing editor and editorial writer to get a look at how covering business is changing. The key takeaway, the pressure to be right and first is putting more stress on business media organizations now than ever before.

Liz Claman; Anchor, Fox Business Network
[The current financial crisis] is the most drawn out breaking story… rumor driven and if you go with every rumor you’re going to gyrate the markets but it’s a journalist’s dream to cover this. “Everyone loves a bubble until it busts and then it spews toxic waste all over the place, and then it’s our fault…classic blame the messenger” “As my father used to say, the only difference between salad and garbage is timing… You’ve got to talk about where the soccer ball is going to go, not where it is right now, you have to present the different echelons of possibility.”

I’m impressed with the intelligence of the comments and our viewers. There’s a blog called Dealbreaker, they get a lot of tips, but if you don’t double and triple check them you lose all credibility. I look at some of the things that get thrown out there, and maybe 78% are right on but what about that other percentage?

Chrystia Freeland; Managing Editor, Financial Times
Anyone working in a print based organization has these dual roles, we’re constantly thinking about the website, but we’re also worried about what’s going to be on the front page tomorrow. And we also have 7 different world editions. As, reporters we are reconciling ourselves that we are not Olympian godlike figures, and what I mean by that is that there is a great temptation to get ahead of the curve, to tell you what tomorrow’s story will be…I don’t think that anyone has a firm grasp on what’s going on. Fly as close to the ground as we can, reconstruct as best we can what actually happened, also, to forecast what the real drivers will be, a little bit of a judgment but to stick to the facts.

You could absolutely understand that there was a bubble but while the music is playing you have to keep on dancing, you know the music is going to stop, and you don’t want to be the guy without a chair but you want to be the guy with the last chair because people are making lots of money.

We focus much more on being right than ever before because that is our competitive advantage.

Joe Nocera; Columnist, New York Times
I wouldn’t want to have to be the person who says the market just dropped 400 points and let me try to explain it for you, that’s a fools errand. I think one of the real value adds of the New York Times is we have a weekly column …the notion that you can bring content and perspective, every Saturday. My job is to try to help you understand what’s going on, from my perspective. We can do a big long story offering perspective and context, it’s the most important thing we can do, I think people really hunger for that and that’s what I’m doing.

We’re acting the same way in this financial crisis as people did in 1929 and before, people don’t change, the next step is the search for villains.

Tags: Crystia Freeland, FOBM, Joe Nocera, larry kramer

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 28th, 2008 at 11:25 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.