Mary Kate Baumann

Lawrence Minard Editor Award – Gerald Loeb Awards

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The Lawrence Minard Editor Award recognizes excellence in editing by a business editor whose work does not receive a byline or whose face does not appear on the air for the work covered.

2002 Minard Editor Award Honoree
Lawrence “Laury” Minard
Managing editor
Forbes

2003 Minard Editor Award Honoree
Glenn Kramon
Business Editor
The New York Times

2004 Minard Editor Award Honoree
Michael Siconolfi
Senior Editor
Financial Investigative Projects
The Wall Street Journal

2005 Minard Editor Award Honoree
Timothy K. Smith
Assistant Managing Editor
Fortune

2006 Minard Editor Award Honoree
Ronald Henkoff
Executive Editor, Bloomberg News
Editor, Bloomberg Markets

2007 Minard Editor Award Honoree
Dan Kelly
News Editor, Page One
The Wall Street Journal

2008 Minard Editor Award Honoree
Frank Comes
Assistant Managing Editor
BusinessWeek

2009 Minard Editor Award Honoree
Lawrence Ingrassia
Business and Financial Editor
The New York Times

2010 Minard Editor Award Honoree
Alix Freedman (right)
Deputy Managing Editor
The Wall Street Journal

2011 Minard Editor Award Honoree
Hank Gilman
Deputy Managing Editor
Fortune

2012 Minard Editor Award Honoree
Winnie O’Kelley
Deputy Business Editor
The New York Times

2012 Minard Editor Award Honoree
Michael Williams
Global Enterprise Editor
Reuters

2013 Minard Editor Award Honoree
John Brecher
Executive Editor for Enterprise
Bloomberg News

2014 Minard Editor Award Honoree
Rebecca Blumenstein
Deputy Editor in Chief
The Wall Street Journal

Loeb Lifetime Achievement Awards

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Honors journalists for exceptional career contributions in the field of business, financial and economic news.

2000
Norman Pearlstine
Time Inc.

1999
Stephen B. Shepard
Business Week

1998
Alan Abelson
Barron’s

1997
Jane Bryant Quinn
Newsweek

1996
Marshall Loeb
Fortune and Money magazines

1995
Leonard S. Silk (posthumously)
New York Times

1994
James W. Michaels
Forbes

1993
Carol J. Loomis (right) Carol Loomis (2)
Fortune

1992
Hobart Rowen
Washington Post

2001 Lifetime Achievement Award Honoree
Allan Sloan
Wall Street Editor
Newsweek

2002 Lifetime Achievement Award Honoree
Paul E. Steiger
Managing Editor
Vice President
The Wall Street Journal

2003 Lifetime Acheivement Award Honoree
Floyd Norris
Chief Financial Correspondent
The New York Times

2004 Lifetime Achievement Award Honoree
Louis Rukeyser
Economic Commentator and Financial Adviser
Host, “Louis Rukeyser’s Wall Street,” CNBC

2005 Lifetime Achievement Award Honoree
Byron E. “Barney” Calame
Public Editor
The New York Times

2006 Lifetime Achievement Award Honoree
Myron Kandel
Founding Financial Editor
CNN

2007 Lifetime Achievement Award Honoree
Matthew Winkler
Editor-in-Chief
Bloomberg News

2008 Lifetime Achievement Award Honoree
Daniel Hertzberg
Deputy Managing Editor
The Wall Street Journal

2009 Lifetime Achievement Award Honoree
Bill Emmott
Former Editor
The Economist

2010 Lifetime Achievement Award Honoree
Walt Bogdanich
Assistant Investigative Editor
The New York Times

2011 Lifetime Achievement Award Honoree
Steven Pearlstein
Economics Columnist
The Washington Post

2012 Lifetime Achievement Award Honoree
Jerry Seib
Deputy Managing Editor and Washington Bureau Chief
The Wall Street Journal

2012 Lifetime Achievement Award Honoree
John Huey
Editor in chief
Time Inc.

2013 Lifetime Achievement Award Honoree
James Flanigan
Business and financial journalist
Los Angeles Times and New York Times

2014 Lifetime Achievement Award Honoree
James Grant
Founder and editor
Grant’s Interest Rate Observer

Isadore Barmash: 1921-2006. The New York Times

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Isadore Barmash

By Italia Marr

Isadore Barmash gained notoriety in the field of business journalism for his thorough, behind-the-scenes reporting of the retailing beat, one of the most closely watched areas of coverage in the business world.

Barmash’s coverage of the retail industry was unprecedented in its depth and breadth. He covered fashion trends, the successes and failures of big businesses, executive decisions, corporate corruption, major mergers and hidden management biases that affected blacks, Hispanics and women.

He showed readers the reality of the retail industry that’s often hidden behind the facades of fashion, marketing and advertising.

“He was a model for all beat reporters: smart, accurate and told you how things really worked in the retail business,” said Hank Gilman, former deputy editor of Fortune magazine. Gilman covered the retailing beat for The Wall Street Journal when he competed against Barmash in the 1980s.

In a successful career that endured more than four decades, Barmash gained his journalism experience and credibility working for a variety of publications. He wrote for Fairchild Publications in the early 1950s, was managing editor of Women’s Wear Daily from 1955 to 1963 and was a reporter for The New York Herald Tribune in 1963 and 1964.

Barmash joined The New York Times in 1965 and retired in 1991 after 26 years. He continued to write freelance articles and books on retailing in the decade following his retirement.

During his 26 years with The Times, Barmash wrote almost 4,000 articles. Many of his pieces involved businesses that were major advertisers with The Times, but Barmash steadfastly refused to let the relationship between the newspaper and its advertisers influence his coverage of the retailing beat.

His fearlessness earned him respect at both The Times and competing newspapers such as The Wall Street Journal. “He had no fear of some of the newspaper’s biggest advertisers and, thus, no fear of the publisher. The separation of church and state was alive and well on his beat,” Gilman said.

In addition to his successful journalism career, Barmash wrote a dozen books. As an author, Barmash was able to cover major issues within the retail industry in a more thorough manner. He published his first novel “Welcome to Our Conglomerate – You’re Fired!” in 1971, which detailed corporate mergers.

Murray Forseter, the former editor of Chain Store Age retail magazine whom Barmash wrote freelance articles for, remembers Barmash as “a meticulous data gatherer.” “He always wrote notes on folded 5×11 copy paper, before the computer,” Forseter said. Barmash’s thorough note taking contributed to the high quality of his work.

On Barmash’s novel “,” published in 2003, John E. O’Toole wrote in the Chicago Sun Times that “the whole book is sheer serendipity for those of us who had despaired of encountering a novel about business that contained a ring of truth. [Barmash] touched on some verities about that most fragile of business entities, the creative organization.”

Readers enjoyed Barmash’s books because he wrote about the retail industry in a way that was both understandable and entertaining. According to The Times, his first book “Welcome to Our Conglomerate – You’re Fired!” was chosen by five book clubs, including the Book of the Month Club.

In The Times article “Isadore Barmash, 84, Prolific Chronicler of Retail Wars, Dies,” which commemorated Barmash after his death, Floyd Norris, who was the chief financial correspondent of The Times when he worked with Barmash, lauded Barmash as “the consummate retail reporter.” “He knew everything there was to know and everybody there was to know in the field,” Norris said.

Forseter describes Barmash as “owl-like: soft-spoken with horn-rimmed glasses and round facial features.” Although some of Barmash’s colleagues may have considered him to be soft-spoken, his written work assertively exposed a side of the retail industry that was previously unknown to the public.

Barmash was born in Philadelphia, Pa., in 1921. He studied journalism at the Charles Morris Price School in Philadelphia. Prior to his journalism career, Barmash served in the Army in the South Pacific during World War II.

Barmash died in Jamaica, Queens in 2006.

Barmash won seven Publisher’s Merit Awards and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. He was also nominated by the TFJR Group for the Top 100 Business News Luminaries of the Century Awards for the 20th century.

Italia Marr is a native of Charlotte, N.C. and a Journalism and Mass Communication major in the Class of 2015 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Loeb Award winners 1997-2012

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The winners of the 1997 Loeb Awards in the six print categories of competition follow:

The winner in the large newspaper category (circulation of more than 400,000) is Bruce D. Butterfield for “Test by Fire: The Story of Malden Mills” in the Boston Globe.

The winners in the medium-size newspaper category (circulation between 150,000 and 400,000) are Cathy Taylor, Liz Pulliam and Elliot Blair Smith for their series of investigative reports on Comparator Systems Corp. in the Orange County Register and Melody Petersen, Rebecca Smith and Ricardo Sandoval for “PG & E Unplugged: Cutting Costs, Cutting Service” in the San Jose Mercury News (a tie).

The winner in the small newspaper category (circulation of less than 150,000) is Lynda V. Mapes for “River of No Return” in The Spokesman-Review (Spokane, Wash.).

The winner in the magazine category is Mark Maremont with Jane Sasseen for “Abuse of Power” in Business Week.

The winner in the commentary category is Holman W. Jenkins Jr. for selected Business World columns in The Wall Street Journal.

The winner in the deadline/beat writing category is Scott Thurn for his coverage of the economy in the San Jose Mercury News.

New to the Loeb Awards this year are the broadcast media categories. The winners and finalists of the 1997 Loeb Awards in the three broadcast categories of competition follow:

The winner in the Network and Large Market Television category is Byron Harris for “On Dangerous Ground” for WFAA-TV (Dallas).

The winner in Other TV Markets is Antonio Valverde for “My First House” for KMEX-TV (Torrance, Calif).

The winner in the radio category is Sarah Gardner for “Bottomline Blues” for Marketplace-USC.

The winners of the 1998 Loeb Awards in the six print categories of competition follow:

Large Newspaper Category

The winner in the large newspaper category (circulation of more than 400,000) is Michael Siconolfi for “The Spin Desk,” his page one article on the practice of “spinning,” which revealed how investment banks allocate hot IPOs to the personal accounts of corporate executives in an apparent bid for business, in The Wall Street Journal.

Medium-Size Newspaper Category

The winner in the medium-size newspaper category (circulation between 150,000 and 400,000), is William Conroy, Nancy Shields, John T. Ward, Larry Arnold, Rick Linsk and Terri Somers for “House of Cards,” an investigative series which uncovered and unraveled one of the most massive real estate frauds in the state’s history, in the Asbury Park Press.

Small Newspaper Category

The winner in the small newspaper category (circulation of less than 150,000), is Amy Hetzner and Amy Baldwin for “Borrowing Trouble,” an investigative series detailing the state’s lending practices and how it affects the poor, in the Birmingham Post-Herald.

Magazines

The winner in the magazine category is Michael Mandel and Dean Foust for their “New Economy” package, which provided intuitive and on-target economic analysis, in BusinessWeek.

Commentary

The winner in the commentary category is Allan Sloan for selected commentaries, in Newsweek.

Deadline/Beat Writing

The winner in the deadline/beat writing category is Alix Freedman and Suein Hwang for their breakthrough coverage of the tobacco industry’s liability settlement, in The Wall Street Journal.

No awards were given this year in the competition’s broadcast categories.

The winners of the 1999 Loeb Awards in the print and broadcast media categories are as follows:

A. LARGE NEWSPAPER CATEGORY

The winner in the large newspaper category (circulation of more than 400,000) is Joel Rutchick for his series of stories uncovering lavish spending practices and suspect activities by the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority chief executive officer, in the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

B. MEDIUM-SIZE NEWSPAPER CATEGORY

The winner in the medium-size newspaper category (circulation between 150,000 and 400,000) is Fred Schulte and Jenni Bergal for “Cosmetic Surgery: The Hidden Dangers,” a vivid and strikingly illustrated depiction on the hidden dangers of cosmetic surgery, in the Sun-Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale, Fla.).

C. SMALL NEWSPAPER CATEGORY

The winner in the small newspaper category (circulation of less than 150,000) is Jennifer Hieger and Bill Heisel, Jr. for “The Dairy Boom: Growth, Trouble and Transition,” an examination of the growing dairy industry and the implications for the community, in the Yakima Herald-Republic (Yakima, Wash.).

D. MAGAZINES

The winner in the magazine category is Shane Tritsch for “Bull Marketing,” which disclosed the miscalculations in the reported stock performance of the Beardstown Ladies investment club, in Chicago Magazine.

E. COMMENTARY

The winner in the commentary category is Walter S. Mossberg for “Personal Technology” columns in The Wall Street Journal.

F. DEADLINE/BEAT WRITING

The winner in the deadline/beat writing category is The New York Times staff for their coverage of the near collapse of Long-Term Capital Management.

G. NETWORK AND LARGE MARKET TV

The winner in the network and large market TV category is Mike Wallace and Walt Bogdanich for their investigative piece on the international pharmaceutical industry, for CBS News, 60 Minutes.

H. RADIO

The winner in the Radio category is Karen Tofte and team for “The World Turned Upside Down,” on Minnesota Public Radio.

The winners and finalists of the 2000 Loeb Awards in the print and broadcast media categories are as follows:

A. LARGE NEWSPAPER CATEGORY

The winner in the large newspaper category (circulation of more than 400,000) is Ellen E. Schultz for her series in the Wall Street Journal on cash-balance pension plans that makes a difficult and important topic comprehensible to readers while leading to government scrutiny and worker activism.

Also nominated as finalists in this category are: Andrea Gerlin for her series of articles on medical errors in the hospital care business, in the Philadelphia Inquirer; David Willman, for his investigative reporting into the dangerous side effects of diabetes drug Rezulin, in the Los Angeles Times; Gina Kolata and Kurt Eichenwald, for reporting that revealed how pharmaceutical companies secretly paid doctors to test drugs on patients, in the New York Times; and Susan Carey, Scott McCartney and William Carley, for their articles on the airline industry, in the Wall Street Journal.

B. MEDIUM-SIZE NEWSPAPER CATEGORY

The winner in the medium-size newspaper category (circulation between 150,000 and 400,000), is Alison Young, Jeffrey Taylor, and Janet Fix for their series of articles examining a deadly nationwide listeria outbreak and the resulting recall and epidemiological investigation, in the Detroit Free-Press.

Also nominated as finalists in this category are: Sam Roe for “Deadly Alliance: How Government and Industry Chose Weapons Over Workers,” a series documenting 50 years of misconduct by the American government and the beryllium industry in the production of metal used in nuclear bombs, in the Toledo Blade; Steve Massey and Mackenzie Carpenter, of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, for their series profiling the downfall of Allegheny General Hospital; and Steve Everly of the Kansas City Star, for his reporting on defective water heaters that impacted thousands of consumers and spurred manufacturers to take responsibility.

C: SMALL NEWSPAPER CATEGORY

The winner in the small newspaper category (circulation of less than 150,000), is Harris Meyer for “The Doctor Will Sell You Now,” an in-depth examination of the ethical implications of physicians selling health-related products to their patients through multi-level marketing arrangements, in the New Times (Hollywood, FL).

Also nominated as finalists in this category are: Rob Perez for his series of stories documenting pricing differences for consumers in Hawaii and other West Coast cities, in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin; and Lance Williams for his stories examining an incidence of tainted sutures that caused health problems nationwide, in the San Francisco Examiner.

D: MAGAZINES

The winner in the magazine category is Jeff Blyskal for “Cheap Car Parts Can Cost You a Bundle,” an article in Consumer Reports highlighting a major problem in the automotive industry that added valuable data and shed light on a confusing topic for consumers.

Also nominated as finalists in this category are: Joshua Ramo for “The Three Marketeers,” a profile of Alan Greenspan, Richard Rubin, and Larry Summers, in Time Magazine; Gary Weiss for “Scandal on Wall Street,” an in-depth investigation of widespread trading irregularities at the American Stock Exchange, in Business Week; and Richard Behar for “The Fairy Tale is Over for the Kingdom of Brunei,” a portrait of that country’s royal family, in Fortune Magazine.

E: COMMENTARY

The winner in the commentary category is David Ignatius for his powerful and provocative columns on business and technology, in the Washington Post.

Also nominated as finalists in this category are: Amity Shlaes for editorials on taxes, in the Wall Street Journal; Joseph Nocera for his columns in Money Magazine; and Stephen Kiernan for editorials on improving air service to the Burlington, VT, area, in the Burlington Free Press.

F: DEADLINE/BEAT WRITING

The winner in the deadline/beat writing category is Ianthe Dugan for her reporting on the business of day trading, in the Washington Post. An honorable mention was awarded to Lawrence Messina for his reporting on the Federal takeover of the First National Bank of Keystone, in the Charleston Gazette (Charleston, West Virginia).

Also nominated as finalists in this category are: Jay Hancock for his reporting on the widespread practice and impact of providing state grants and subsidies to corporations, in the Baltimore Sun; Greg Schneider, also of the Baltimore Sun, for his series on the making of the F-22 fighter plane; and Monica Langley, for her articles on charitable giving and tax matters, in the Wall Street Journal.

G: NETWORK AND LARGE MARKET TV

The winner in the network and large market TV category is Brian Gaffney, Lea Thompson and team for their in-depth series on the practices of the sweepstakes industry, for Dateline NBC.

Also named as finalists in this category are: Iris Adler for her compelling documentation of the closing of a plant in Wilton, ME, for New England Cable News; Jack Cloherty and Mike Taibbi for “Unhappy Returns,” for Dateline NBC; Chris Farrell, Joe Garbarino and team for their personal finance series “Right on the Money,” for Twin Cities Public Television.

H: RADIO

The winner in the Radio category is Carl Goldstein and team for “Minnesota in the Dot Com Age,” on Minnesota Public Radio.

2001 Winners

CATEGORY A: LARGE NEWSPAPERS

“The Body Brokers” by William Heisel, Mark Katches and Ronald Campbell, The Orange County Register

CATEGORY B: MEDIUM NEWSPAPERS

“Government Inc.” by Robert Sargent, Ramsey Campbell, Jim Leusner and Sean Holton, The Orlando Sentinel

CATEGORY C: SMALL NEWSPAPERS

“Porn in the USA” by Bruce Rushton, The Riverfront Times (St. Louis, MO)

CATEGORY D: MAGAZINES

“AOL’s Rough Riders” by Gary Rivlin, The Industry Standard

CATEGORY E: COMMENTARY

“Floyd Norris Columns” by Floyd Norris, The New York Times

CATEGORY F: DEADLINE OR BEAT WRITING

“Juice Squeeze” by Rebecca Smith, The Wall Street Journal

CATEGORY G: TELEVISION

“The Paper Chase” by Lynne Dale, John Larson, Dateline NBC – NBC News

CATEGORY H: RADIO

“The 100 Greatest Events in the History of the Automotive Industry” by Ed Wallace, KLIF-AM (Dallas, TX)

2002 Winners

CATEGORY A: LARGE NEWSPAPERS

“Uninformed Consent” by Duff Wilson and David Heath, The Seattle Times

CATEGORY B: MEDIUM NEWSPAPERS

“Unequal Opportunity” by Jeffrey Meitrodt, Mark Schleifstein, Pamela Coyle and Ronette King, The Times-Picayune (New Orleans, LA)

1. “Pushed Aside”
2. “Exploiting Opportunity”
3. “Insecure Future”
4. “Breaking Barriers”
5. “Through the Cracks”
6. “Ready-Mix DBE”
7. “Numbers Game”

CATEGORY C: SMALL NEWSPAPERS

“Foal Deaths” by Janet Patton, Lexington (KY) Herald-Leader

CATEGORY D: MAGAZINES

“The Numbers Game, Why Earnings Are Too Rosy, Confused About Earnings” by David Henry and Nanette Byrnes, BusinessWeek

CATEGORY E: COMMENTARY

“Market Watch” by Gretchen Morgenson, The New York Times

CATEGORY F: DEADLINE OR BEAT WRITING

“Enron: The Demise of a Giant” by Rebecca Smith and John Emshwiller, The Wall Street Journal

CATEGORY G: NEWS OR WIRE SERVICE

“Muddy Markets” by Jonathan Berr, Adam Levy, Peter Robison, Russell Hubbard and Neil Roland, Bloomberg News

1. “Raytheon Briefed Analysts Without Telling the Public”
2. “Raytheon SEC Probe May Test New Disclosure Rules, Analysts Say”
3. “Enron CEO Skilling Takes Company in New Directions”
4. “U.S. Earnings Reports Miss Point — How Much Did Company Earn?”
5. “Enron Investors Say Lay Must Deliver on Earnings Transparency”
6. “SEC to Charge Company With Misleading `Pro Formas’”
7. “SEC to File First Fair Disclosure Case, Pitt Says”

CATEGORY H AND I: TELEVISION

“The Money Trail” by Allan Dodds Frank and Lisa Slow, Cable News Network/CNNfn

2003 Winners

CATEGORY A: LARGE NEWSPAPERS

“AOL’s Advertising Deals” by Alec Klein, The Washington Post

CATEGORY B: MEDIUM NEWSPAPERS

“The CEO and His Church” by Deborah O’Neil and Jeff Harrington, St. Petersburg (FL) Times

CATEGORY C: SMALL NEWSPAPERS

“A License to Steal” by Eric Eyre and Scott Finn, The Charleston (WV) Gazette

CATEGORY D: MAGAZINES

“Nationalities of Convenience” by Hal Lux, Institutional Investor

CATEGORY E: COMMENTARY

“Auto Industry Commentary” by Jerry Flint, Forbes

CATEGORY F: DEADLINE WRITING

“WorldCom’s Whirlwind Demise” by Rebecca Blumenstein, Gregory Zuckerman, Jared Sandberg, Shawn Young, Susan Pulliam, Deborah Solomon and Carrick Mollenkamp, The Wall Street Journal

CATEGORY G: BEAT WRITING

“Inside the S.E.C.” by Stephen Labaton, The New York Times

CATEGORY H: NEWS SERVICES OR ONLINE CONTENT

“SuperModels” by Jon D. Markman, CNBC on MSN Money

CATEGORY I: TELEVISION SHORT FORM

“Enron Investigation” by Brian Ross, Rhonda Schwartz, Chris Vlasto, Jill Rackmill, David Scott, Gerilyn Curtin and Simon Surowicz, ABC News

CATEGORY J: TELEVISION LONG FORM

“La Oroya, City of Lead” by Craig Cheatham, Mark Hadler and Andrea Torrence, KMOV-TV (CBS affiliate, St. Louis, MO)

2004 Winners

CATEGORY A: LARGE NEWSPAPERS

“Big Green” by David Ottaway and Joe Stephens, The Washington Post

1. “Inside the Nature Conservancy”
2. “A House in the Woods”
3. “When Conservation and Business Fail to Mix“

CATEGORY B: MEDIUM NEWSPAPERS

“Drugging the Poor” by Fred Schulte, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

CATEGORY C: SMALL NEWSPAPERS

“Everybody at Risk” by Kate Long, The Charleston Gazette

1. “On The Edge”
2. “We Sink Or Swim With Everyone Else”
3. “Insurance: With & Without”
4. “Cancel The Discount?”
5. “Hospital Sticker Shock”
6. “We Thought We Had Insurance“

CATEGORY D: MAGAZINES

“Is Your Job Next? / The Rise of India” by Aaron Bernstein, Pete Engardio and Manjeet Kripalani, BusinessWeek

1. “Is Your Job Next?”
2. “The Rise Of India“

CATEGORY E: COMMENTARY

“Golden State” by Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times

CATEGORY F: DEADLINE WRITING

“The Day Grasso Quit as NYSE Chief” by Susanne Craig, Ianthe Jeanne Dugan, Theo Francis and Kate Kelly, The Wall Street Journal

1. “Grasso Quits NYSE Amid Pay Furor”
2. “Tight-Knit Culture Will Help Shape Big Board’s Future”
3. “Weakened NYSE Must Face Challenges”
4. “How Much Severance Pay Is Enough?“

CATEGORY G: BEAT WRITING

“A Spotlight on Boeing’s Legal and Ethical Scandals” by J. Lynn Lunsford, Andy Pasztor and Anne Marie Squeo, The Wall Street Journal

1. “U. S. Probes Whether Boeing Misused a Rival’s Documents”
2. “Mergers Make It Tougher to Punish Federal Contractors”
3. “Boeing Is Punished in Rocket Case”
4. “Boeing’s Plan to Smooth Bumps Of Jet Market Hits Turbulence”
5. “Air Force Ex-Official Had Ties To Boeing During Contract Talks”
6. “Boeing CEO Condit Resigns In Shake-Up at Aerospace Titan”
7. “How Two Officials Got Caught By Pentagon’s Revolving Door“

CATEGORY H: NEWS SERVICES OR ONLINE CONTENT

“The Flimflam Man” by Adrian Cox, David Evans and Abhay Singh, Bloomberg News

“Risky Rx” by Chris Adams and Alison Young, Knight Ridder Washington Bureau

CATEGORY I: SHORT FORM TELEVISION

“The Jobless Recovery” by Doug Adams, Christiana Arvelis, Donna Bass, Steve Capus, Joo Lee, Karen Nye, Albert Oetgen, Felicia Patinkin, Charles Schaeffer, Nikki Stamos and Anne Thompson, NBC Nightly News

CATEGORY J: LONG FORM TELEVISION

“Imported from India” by Rome Hartman and Lesley Stahl, CBS News “60 Minutes”

2005 Winners

CATEGORY A: LARGE NEWSPAPERS

“Death on the Tracks” by Walt Bogdanich, The New York Times

CATEGORY B: MEDIUM NEWSPAPERS

“Danger Overhead: Crushed Roofs” by Bill Vlasic and Jeff Plungis, The Detroit News

1. “Thousands killed, hurt as auto roofs collapse”
2. “Seat belts not enough to save lives in rollovers”
3. “Feds, Big Three gird for roof showdown“

CATEGORY C: SMALL NEWSPAPERS

“The China Challenge” by Craig Troianello, Yakima (WA) Herald-Republic

1. “Apples to Apples”
2. “Apples feed economy”
3. “Peering into the future”
4. “Meeting and competing“

CATEGORY D: MAGAZINES

“The Toll of a New Machine” by Charles Fishman, Fast Company

“Why We’re Losing the War on Cancer (and How to Win It)” by Clifton Leaf, Fortune

CATEGORY E: COMMENTARY

“Cracks in Fannie Mae’s Foundation” by Peter Eavis, TheStreet.com

1. “Fannie’s Fearsome New Year Challenge”
2. “Freddie Flap Highlights Fannie Flaw”
3. “A New Reason to Fret About Fannie”
4. “Fannie Flap Points to Options Grants”
5. “Falcon Has Landed at Fannie Mae”
6. “Fannie Probe Turns to Derivatives”
7. “Fannie Fight Ready to Get Nastier“

CATEGORY F: DEADLINE WRITING

“End of an Era” by Andrew Ross Sorkin, Steve Lohr, David Barboza, Gary Rivlin and John Markoff,The New York Times

CATEGORY G: BEAT WRITING

“The Short Life of ‘Lifetime’ Health-Care Benefits” by Ellen E. Schultz and Theo Francis,The Wall Street Journal

CATEGORY H: NEWS SERVICES OR ONLINE CONTENT

“Exposing Small-Cap Fraud” by Carol S. Remond, Dow Jones Newswires

CATEGORY I: TELEVISION DEADLINE

“Money for Nothing?” by Chris Cuomo, Shelley Ross, Bob Lange, Thomas Berman and Jack Pyle, ABC News: Primetime

CATEGORY J: TELEVISION ENTERPRISE

No finalists were announced in the television enterprise category. The judging committee has chosen not to select a Loeb winner in the television enterprise category for 2005.

2006 Winners

CATEGORY A: LARGE NEWSPAPERS

“Borrower Beware” by Ann Hardie, Carrie Teegardin and Alan Judd, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

CATEGORY B: MEDIUM NEWSPAPERS

There was one winner and one honorable mention in the medium newspapers category.

Winner: “Ohio Rare Coin Funds” by Christopher Kirkpatrick, Joshua Boak, Steve Eder, Jim Drew and Mike Wilkinson,The Blade (Toledo, Ohio)

Honorable Mention: “Selling Drug Secrets” by Luke Timmerman and David Heath,The Seattle Times

CATEGORY C: SMALL NEWSPAPERS

Sam Kennedy and Christina Gostomski of The Morning Call (Allentown, Pa.) for “School’s Pursuit of Profit Leaves Students Behind”

CATEGORY D: MAGAZINES

Carol Loomis of Fortune for “Why Carly’s Big Bet Is Failing, How the HP Board KO’d Carly”

CATEGORY E: COMMENTARY

There were two winners in the commentary category.

Robert L. Pollock of The Wall Street Journal for “Review and Outlook: Kianna’s Law”

Steven Pearlstein of The Washington Post for “Business and Economics Columns”

CATEGORY F: DEADLINE WRITING

Maureen Milford, Ted Griffith, Luladey B. Tadesse, Robin Brown, Gary Soulsman, Christopher Yasiejko, Michele Besso, Steven Church, Jeff Montgomery and Peter Bothum of The News Journal (New Castle, Del.) for “Sale of MBNA”

CATEGORY G: BEAT WRITING

Geeta Anand of The Wall Street Journal for “The Most Expensive Drugs and How They Came to Be”

CATEGORY H: NEWS SERVICES OR ONLINE CONTENT

Frank Bass, Dirk Lammers and Larry Margasak of The Associated Press for “Lax Loans”

CATEGORY I: TELEVISION DEADLINE

Anne Thompson, Doug Adams, Liz Brown, Carl Sears, Kelly Venardos, Joo Lee, Rick Brown, Katie Ernst, Rich Dubroff, Doug Stoddart, Chuck Schaeffer, Mario Garcia, Meaghan Rady, Genevieve MichelBryan, Jill Silvestri, Chris Scholl, Sharon Hoffman, Albert Oetgen and John Reiss of NBC Nightly News for “The Katrina Effect”

CATEGORY J: TELEVISION ENTERPRISE

There was one winner and one honorable mention in the television enterprise category.

Winner: Paul Solman, Lee Koromvokis, Jeffrey Klein, Jacob Klein and Joanne Elgart Jennings of The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer for “China Rising”

Honorable Mention: Byron Harris, Kraig Kirchem and Mark Smith of WFAA-TV (Dallas, Texas) for “Learning the Hard Way”

BUSINESS BOOK

James B. Stewart for “DisneyWar” from Simon & Schuster

2007 Winners

CATEGORY A: LARGE NEWSPAPERS

“The Secretive Backdating of Option Awards for Corporate Executives” by Charles Forelle, James Bandler, Mark Maremont and Steve Stecklow, The Wall Street Journal

1. The Perfect Payday
2. Open Spigot, Bosses’ Pay: How Stock Options Became Part of the Problem
3. Matter of Timing, Five More COmpanies Show Questionable Options Pattern
4. Dating Game, Stock-Options Criminal Charge: Slush Fund and Fake Employees
5. Executive Retreat, Stock-Options Scandal Fugitive Puts Roots Down in Namibia
6. Bad Options, How a Giant Insurer Decided to Oust Hugely Successful CEO
7. Executive Pay: The 9/11 Factor

CATEGORY B: MEDIUM NEWSPAPERS

“Crab Factory” by Chiaki Kawajiri, Gady A. Epstein and Stephanie Desmon, The Baltimore Sun

CATEGORY C: SMALL NEWSPAPERS

“The Great Empire Zone Giveaway” by Mike McAndrew and Michelle Breidenbach, The Post-Standard (Syracuse, N.Y.)

CATEGORY D: MAGAZINES

“How Many Lightbulbs Does It Take to Change the World? One.” by Charles Fishman, Fast Company

CATEGORY E: COMMENTARY

“Steve Bailey Downtown” by Steve Bailey, The Boston Globe

CATEGORY F: DEADLINE WRITING

“The Implosion of a Highflying Hedge Fund” by Ann Davis, Henny Sender and Gregory Zuckerman, The Wall Street Journal

CATEGORY G: BEAT WRITING

“Radio Shack CEO’s Resume in Question” by Heather Landy, Fort Worth Star-Telegram

CATEGORY H: NEWS SERVICES OR ONLINE CONTENT

“Who Are the Short Sellers?” by Alistair Barr, MarketWatch

CATEGORY I: FEATURE WRITING

“Rewriting the Social Contract” by Louis Uchitelle, The New York Times

CATEGORY J: TELEVISION DAILY

“Trophy” by Jim Popkin, Lisa Myers, Albert Oetgen, Doug Adams, Adam Cirlasky and Rich Gardella, NBC News

CATEGORY K: TELEVISION ENTERPRISE

“The Mother of All Heists” by Jeff Fager, Steve Kroft, Andy Court, Keith Sharman, Patti Hassler and Daniel J. Glucksman, CBS News 60 Minutes

CATEGORY L: BUSINESS BOOK

“The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More” by Chris Anderson, Hyperion

2008 Winners

CATEGORY A: LARGE NEWSPAPERS

“Toxic Pipeline,” by Walt Bogdanich, Jake Hooker, David Barboza and Andrew W. Lehern, The New York Times

CATEGORY B: MEDIUM NEWSPAPERS

“Sold A Nightmare,” by Binyamin Appelbaum, Lisa Hammersly Munn, Ted Mellnik, Peter St. Onge and Liz Chandler, TheCharlotte (N.C.) Observer

CATEGORY C: SMALL NEWSPAPERS

“The China Effect,” by Tony Bartelme, The Post and Courier (Charleston, S.C.)

CATEGORY D: MAGAZINES

“House of Junk,” by Allan Sloan, Fortune

Honorable Mention: “In Nature’s Casino,” by Michael Lewis, The New York Times Magazine

CATEGORY E: COMMENTARY

“Talking Business,” by Joe Nocera, The New York Times

Honorable Mention: “Business Columnist,” by Daniel Howes, The Detroit News

CATEGORY F: BREAKING NEWS

“The Fall of E. Stanley O’Neal at Merrill Lynch,” by Jenny Anderson and Landon Thomas Jr., The New York Times

Honorable Mention: “A New U.S. Auto Industry,” by Katie Merx, Tim Higgins, Tom Walsh, Mark Phelan, Susan Tompor, Sarah A. Webster, Katherine Yung and Joe Guy Collier, Detroit Free Press

CATEGORY G: BEAT WRITING

“Breakdown at Bear Stearns,” by Kate Kelly, Serena Ng, Susanne Craig and David Reilly, The Wall Street Journal

Honorable Mention: “Golden Opportunities,” by Charles Duhigg, The New York Times

CATEGORY H: NEWS SERVICES

“Wall Street’s Faustian Bargain,” by Mark Pittman, Bob Ivry and Kathleen M. Howley, Bloomberg News

CATEGORY I: FEATURE WRITING

“Message in a Bottle,” by Charles Fishman, Fast Company [Added from the magazine category]

CATEGORY J: ONLINE

“Keeping Up With The Wangs,” by Art Lenehan, Anh Ly and Suzanne McGee, MSN Money

CATEGORY K: TELEVISION DAILY

“India’s Promise,” by Steve Washington, Darren Gersh, Dana Greenspon and Sanjay Jha, Nightly Business Report

CATEGORY L: TELEVISION ENTERPRISE

“Money for Nothing,” by Byron Harris, Mark Smith and Kraig Kirchem, WFAA-TV

CATEGORY M: BUSINESS BOOK

Mine’s Bigger: Tom Perkins and the Making of the Greatest Sailing Machine Ever Built by David A. Kaplan (William Morrow)

2009 Winners

CATEGORY A: LARGE NEWSPAPERS

“The Reckoning,” by Gretchen Morgenson, Peter S. Goodman, Charles Duhigg, Carter Dougherty, Eric Dash, Julie Creswell, Jo Becker, Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Stephen Labaton, The New York Times

CATEGORY B: MEDIUM & SMALL NEWSPAPERS

“Borrowers Betrayed,” by Jack Dolan, Matthew Haggman and Rob Barry, The Miami Herald

Honorable Mention:

“The Cruelest Cuts,” by Ames Alexander, Peter St. Onge, Franco Ordoñez, Kerry Hall and Ted Mellnik, The Charlotte Observer

CATEGORY C: MAGAZINES

“Obamanomics,” by David Leonhardt, The New York Times Magazine

CATEGORY D: COMMENTARY

“Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,” by Brian M. Carney, The Wall Street Journal

CATEGORY E: BREAKING NEWS

“The Day That Changed Wall Street,” by Carrick Mollenkamp, Susanne Craig, Serena Ng, Aaron Lucchetti, Matthew Karnitschnig, Dan Fitzpatrick, Deborah Solomon, Dennis K. Berman, Liam Pleven, Peter Lattman and Annelena Lobb, The Wall Street Journal

CATEGORY F: BEAT WRITING

“The Fall of Wachovia,” by Rick Rothacker, The Charlotte Observer

“Wall Street,” by Gretchen Morgenson, The New York Times

CATEGORY G: NEWS SERVICES

“Broken Promises,” by William Selway and Martin Z. Braun, Bloomberg News

CATEGORY H: FEATURE WRITING

“The End,” by Michael Lewis, Condé Nast Portfolio

CATEGORY I: ONLINE

“Middle Class Crunch,” by Art Lenehan, Peggy Collins, Aaron Whallon, Anh Ly, Elizabeth Daza, Joe Farro, Sean Enzwiler, Rachel Elson, Mark Baumgartner, Lauren Barack, Richard Conniff and Judi Hasson, MSN Money

CATEGORY J: TELEVISION BREAKING NEWS

“Economic Crisis: House of Cards,” by Steve Kroft, Jennifer MacDonald and L. Franklin Devine, CBS News/60 Minutes

CATEGORY K: TELEVISION ENTERPRISE

“The Wasteland,” by Scott Pelley, Solly Granatstein and Nicole Young, CBS News/60 Minutes

CATEGORY L: BUSINESS BOOK

“Trillion Dollar Meltdown: Easy Money, High Rollers, and the Great Credit Crash,” by Charles R. Morris, Public Affairs

2010 Winners

CATEGORY A: LARGE NEWSPAPERS

“Food Safety,” by Michael Moss and Andrew Martin, The New York Times

CATEGORY B: MEDIUM & SMALL NEWSPAPERS

“Keys to the Kingdom: How State Regulators Enabled a $7 Billion Ponzi Scheme,” by Michael Sallah, Rob Barry and Lucy Komisar, The Miami Herald

CATEGORY C: MAGAZINES

“How Bernie Did It,” by James Bandler, Nicholas Varchaver and Doris Burke, Fortune Magazine

CATEGORY D: COMMENTARY

“Capitalist Fools and Wall Street’s Toxic Message,” by Joseph E. Stiglitz, Vanity Fair

CATEGORY E: BREAKING NEWS

Bankruptcy,” by Christine Tierney, David Shepardson and Gordon Trowbridge, The Detroit News

CATEGORY F: BEAT WRITING

“The Toyota Recall,” by Ralph Vartabedian and Ken Bensinger, Los Angeles Times

CATEGORY G: NEWS SERVICE

“Goldman, Moody’s and the Collapse of the American Economy,” by Greg Gordon, Kevin G. Hall and Chris Adams, McClatchy Newspapers

CATEGORY H: FEATURE WRITING

“Wall Street on the Tundra,” by Michael Lewis, Vanity Fair

CATEGORY I: ONLINE COMMENTARY AND BLOGGING

“Pogue’s Posts,” by David Pogue, The New York Times

CATEGORY J: PERSONAL FINANCE

“From Prison to the Pinnacle,” by Matthew Hathaway, Elizabethe Holland and Jim Gallagher, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

CATEGORY K: TELEVISION BREAKING NEWS

“The Madoff Scandal,” by Scott Cohn, Mary Thompson, Courtney Ford, Wally Griffith, Molly Mazilu, CNBC

CATEGORY L: TELEVISION ENTERPRISE

“House of Cards,” by David Faber, Mitch Weitzner, James Jacoby, Jill Landes and Patrick Ahearn, CNBC

Honorable Mention:

“Black Money,” by Marlena Telvick, Lowell Bergman, Oriana Zill de Granados and Daniel Hirst, PBS Frontline

CATEGORY M: BUSINESS BOOK

“Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System – and Themselves,” by Andrew Ross Sorkin, Penguin Group (USA) – Viking

2011 Winners

CATEGORY A: LARGE NEWSPAPERS

“Deep Trouble,” by Ben Casselman, Russell Gold, Douglas A. Blackmon, Vanessa O’Connell, Alexandra Berzon and Ana Campoy, The Wall Street Journal

CATEGORY B: MEDIUM & SMALL NEWSPAPERS

“Seniors for Sale,” by Michael J. Berens, The Seattle Times

“Hounded — Debtors and the New Breed of Collectors,” by Chris Serres and Glenn Howatt, Minneapolis Star Tribune

CATEGORY C: MAGAZINES

“End-of-Life Warning at $618,616 Makes Me Wonder Was It Worth It,” by Amanda Bennett and Charles R. Babcock, Bloomberg Businessweek

CATEGORY D: COMMENTARY

“Paul Krugman Columns,” by Paul Krugman, The New York Times

CATEGORY E: BREAKING NEWS

“Flash Crash,” by Tom Lauricella, Peter A. McKay, Scott Patterson, Jenny Strasburg, Robin Sidel, Carolyn Cui and Mary Pilon, The Wall Street Journal

CATEGORY F: BEAT REPORTING

“Education Inc.,” by Daniel Golden, John Hechinger and John Lauerman, Bloomberg News

CATEGORY G: NEWS SERVICES

“Profiting From Fallen Soldiers,” by David Evans, Bloomberg News

CATEGORY H: EXPLANATORY

“Edifice Complex,” by David Nicklaus and Tim Logan, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

CATEGORY I: ONLINE ENTERPRISE

“What They Know,” by Julia Angwin, Emily Steel, Scott Thurm, Christina Tsuei, Paul Antonson, Jill Kirschenbaum, Jovi Juan, Andrew Garcia Phillips, Sarah Slobin, Susan McGregor, Tom McGinty and Jennifer Valentino-DeVries, The Wall Street Journal

CATEGORY J: BLOGGING

“Liveblogging Yahoo Earnings Calls in 2010 (They’re Funny!),” by Kara Swisher, All Things Digital

CATEGORY K: PERSONAL FINANCE

“Student Debt,” by Ron Lieber, The New York Times

CATEGORY L: TELEVISION ENTERPRISE

“Remington Under Fire: A CNBC Investigation,” by Mitch Weitzner, Scott Cohn, Jeff Pohlman, Emily Bodenberg, Steven Banton and Gary Vandenbergh, CNBC

CATEGORY M: BUSINESS BOOKS

“More Money Than God: Hedge Funds and the Making of a New Elite” by Sebastian Mallaby, The Penguin Press

2012 Winners

CATEGORY A: LARGE NEWSPAPERS

Ken Bensinger for “Wheels of Fortune” in Los Angeles Times

CATEGORY B: MEDIUM & SMALL NEWSPAPERS

Raquel Rutledge, Rick Barrett, John Diedrich, Ben Poston and Mike de Sisti for “Shattered Trust” in Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Spencer Soper and Scott Kraus for “Inside Amazon’s Warehouse” in The Morning Call

CATEGORY C: MAGAZINES

Peter Elkind, Jennifer Reingold and Doris Burke for “Inside Pfizer’s Palace Coup” in Fortune

CATEGORY D: COMMENTARY

Zanny Minton Beddoes, Edward Carr, John Peet, Patrick Foulis and John O’Sullivan for “Euro Zone” in The Economist

CATEGORY E: BREAKING NEWS

Brent Snavely, Greg Gardner and Chrissie Thompson for “GM-UAW Contract Negotiations” in Detroit Free Press

CATEGORY F: BEAT REPORTING

John Fauber for “‘Side Effects’ Beat Reporting” in Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

CATEGORY G: NEWS SERVICES

Brian Grow, Kelly Carr, Laurence Fletcher, Nanette Byrnes, Matthew Bigg, Joshua Schneyer, Cynthia Johnston and Sara Ledwith for “Shell Games” in Reuters

CATEGORY H: EXPLANATORY

Scott Pelley, Robert G. Anderson, Daniel Ruetenik, Robert J. Shattuck and Nicole Young for “The Next Housing Shock” on CBS News 60 Minutes

CATEGORY I: ONLINE ENTERPRISE

Mark Maremont, Tom McGinty, Jon Keegan, Palani Kumanan, Sarah Slobin and Neil King Jr. for “Jet Tracker” for The Wall Street Journal

CATEGORY J: BLOGGING

Felix Salmon for “Felix Salmon’s Blog” for Reuters

CATEGORY K: PERSONAL FINANCE

Penelope Wang, Kim Clark and Lisa Gibbs for “‘Protecting Your Parents’ Series” in Money

CATEGORY L: TELEVISION ENTERPRISE

Laura Sydell and Alex Blumberg for “When Patents Attack” on NPR and This American Life

CATEGORY M: BUSINESS BOOKS

Walter Isaacson for “Steve Jobs” published by Simon & Schuster

HONORABLE MENTION:
Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo for “Poor Economics” published by PublicAffairs

By Larry Kramer

In: Essay 01 Apr 2013 1 comment

Larry Kramer

Born April 24, 1950, is president and publisher of USA Today. Prior to that he was an adjunct professor at the Newhouse School at Syracuse University and a media consultant. He authored “C-Scape: Conquer the Factors Changing Business Today,” (HarperCollins) in 2010. He was the first president of CBS Digital Media and founder, chairman and CEO of CBS MarketWatch. Prior to that he spent 20 years as an editor and business reporter for The Washington Post and the San Francisco Examiner. He has a BS in journalism from Syracuse and an MBA from Harvard.

From age 12, when I was a newspaper delivery boy for the Bergen Record, a suburban afternoon newspaper in a New Jersey suburb of New York City, all I wanted to do was work for a newspaper. I loved being the guy who could run into a room and tell a story first and best, and I lived for the wide eyes of the kids who would listen to me when I told them.

I never forgot that the magic was in those eyes. While I was in love with telling a story, I always knew that telling a story when no one was listening was just no fun at all. So if I could see they were bored or had heard the story before, I knew when to stop talking.

That lesson, that success was measured not by how well I told the story, but how well it was received, served me well for the rest of my life, as a journalist, as a manager and very much so as an entrepreneur.

I’m convinced that the success of Marketwatch.com can be traced to the fact that it started to serve a consumer need that we identified and the rest of the financial news industry ignored. Because we paid attention to that, and focused on those consumers, we were able to build a terrific business that was sold 7 years after it was created for $525 million.

It is, in fact, a good business story itself.

In the mid 1990s people were getting excited about Wall Street again. Tech stocks were starting to boom, and something called the Internet was giving people the sense that there might be a big change coming in how we could get information and communicate. Small start-up companies were becoming huge businesses over night.

Everyone wanted to be a part of this new gold rush, and invest in companies that would grow so quickly that even the investors would make fortunes. And there were growing beliefs that stock brokers were more worried about their own income and weren’t much help to the investors who wanted to bet big on some exciting start up companies. So people were beginning to trade for themselves at home, using a new generation of brokerages that allowed them to do so without the help of a broker.

As a business journalist and then a newspaper editor for 20 years I was acutely aware that business readers were hungry for information that could help them invest, and that most business journalism that influenced the markets was being delivered only to people who paid a lot for it and got it immediately on any one of several financial terminals, including those from Reuters, Dow Jones and Bloomberg.

Those terminals cost around $2,000 a month, and they also delivered real-time stock and bond information. Consequently most were installed in business locations and paid for by employers.

As the leading financial news businesses started to experiment on the Internet they heard a consistent message from their $2,000-a-month customers: “If you put your news on the Internet for free, we won’t be paying you $2,000-a-month for the same information.”

And we knew that the rapidly growing community of at-home day traders would demand real-time financial news to help them get through their trading day. So we decided that as long as the only good suppliers of that news made considerable money charging for it, there could be an opening for an advertising supported business that could offer the information free to the user: the model essentially used by content creators who served the mass market.

Newspaper were charging a quarter in those days because they had to prove that someone bought the paper, not because the quarter contributed a real income. If they could, they would be giving them away.

On the Internet, we didn’t need to charge anyone to prove they had read us. We could keep track of every page view. So advertisers would know exactly how many people saw their ad. They liked that and were willing to bet on this new form of information delivery. And since many new electronic brokers were popping up to serve this new audience, we had a huge list of potential advertisers who all wanted to reach our specific audience.

So we launched Marketwatch.com in October 1997. And we covered the most traded stocks first. Our readers were trading Yahoo, AOL, Microsoft and other high fliers of the time, so we needed to watch those stocks. And our reporters were just as good as those working for the “big boys.”

So to our readers, we did as well as our high-priced competitors. Gradually we built the site up by adding more and more journalists, always assigning them to the next most heavily traded companies and sectors.

When the advertising bust of 2000 occurred, we stayed the course and believed in our model, finding additional sources of revenue while we waited for advertising to return. We believed there were still huge numbers of people who wanted to read our content, but couldn’t or wouldn’t pay the price of the expensive terminals.

It worked. When advertising returned, we were still there and many of our competitors had folded or become for-pay sites. Our advertising numbers roared back and we were well on our way to building a juggernaut.

In the end, everyone in the company was so focused on our customers and what they wanted that even Dow Jones, arguably the best financial news organization in the country, was willing to pay half a million dollars for a small company with just over 100 journalists who covered the same thing as they did.

Knight-Bagehot Alumni Prizes

In: Awards 01 Apr 2013 0 comments

(employers at time of award with links to some of the prize-winning entries)

1996 – Craig Torres (’89), The Wall Street Journal

1997 – Leslie Wayne (’80), The New York Times (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)

1998 – James Grimaldi (’93), The Seattle Times

1999 – Janet Moore (’93), Minneapolis Star-Tribune (1)

Caroline Donnellly (’78), Corporate Board Member

2000 – Stephen Dunphy (’76), The Seattle Times (1) (2)

Leah Beth Ward (’88), Charlotte Observer

Peter Kibiriti (’97), Enterprise Africa

2001 – Paul Davies (’96), Philadelphia Daily News (1)

2002 – John Authers (’00), The Financial Times

2003 – Jon Hilsenrath (’96), The Wall Street Journal (1)

Stanley Reed (’88), BusinessWeek (1) (2) (3) (4) (5)

2004 – Sara Silver (’00), The Financial Times (1)

2005 – Peter Gosselin (’84), The Los Angeles Times

2006 – Anne Tergesen (’97), BusinessWeek (1)

2007 – Mark Whitehouse (’04), The Wall Street Journal (1)

2008 – David Cho (’06), The Washington Post (1) (2) (3) (4) (5)

2009 – David Wessel (’81), The Wall Street Journal

2010 — Brian J. O’Connor (’01), Detroit News (1)

2011 – Greg Farrell (’97), Bloomberg News

2012 – Peter S. Green (’04), Bloomberg News (1) (2)

2013 — Neil Irwin (’07), The Washington Post, for his book, “The Alchemists: Three Central Bankers and a World on Fire”

2014 — Julia Angwin (’99), ProPublica, for her book, “Dragnet Nation: A Quest for Privacy, Secrecy, and Freedom in a World of Relentless Surveillance”

By Terri Thompson

In: Essay 01 Apr 2013 0 comments

Terri Thompson

Born May 29, 1952, became director of the Knight-Bagehot Fellowship in Economics and Business Journalism at Columbia Graduate School of Journalism in 1993. In her 20 years as a business journalist, she has reported, written and/or edited for the Coralville (Iowa) Courier, Purchasing Magazine, BusinessWeek, Institutional Investor, Working Woman, U.S. News & World Report and Lear’s. A graduate of New York University and Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, and a 1981 Bagehot Fellow at Columbia, she is the author of “Biz Kids’ Guide to Success: Money-Making Ideas for Young Entrepreneurs” (Barron’s, 1992) and editor of “Writing About Business: The New Columbia Knight-Bagehot Guide to Economics and Business Journalism” (Columbia University Press, 2000). A former president of the New York Financial Writers’ Association, Thompson is the recipient of numerous journalism awards, including the NYFWA’s Elliott V. Bell award for making a significant, long-term contribution to the profession of financial journalism.

In the early 1970s, business reporting was still much a backwater in journalism — a bleak wasteland. As veteran business journalist Chris Welles once recalled, “If you did a lousy job covering city hall, couldn’t hack it writing obits, weren’t too swift taking classified ads over the telephone, then they sent you to the business section. Maybe they even made you business editor.”

But by the mid-1970s, with the looming oil crisis, the near bankruptcy of New York City, and the simultaneous appearance of both recession and inflation, business and economics became front-page news. And in 1975, Columbia University gave birth to the Walter Bagehot Fellowship in Economics and Business Journalism.

The brainchild of Elie Abel, then dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia, the “Bagehot” was to be similar to the Nieman Fellowship at Harvard, a program for mid-career journalists who wanted to spend an academic year at Columbia. But unlike the Nieman, the Bagehot was to be rigorous: at least five courses per semester, complete with final exams.

Training journalists, not academics, the program would be rooted in the Journalism School, with special seminars and dinners tailored specifically to the needs of journalists; at the same time, Fellows would study economics and business, drawing on the resources of the entire university.

The co-founding directors of the Bagehot Program were Steve Shepard, who later became my boss at BusinessWeek, and Soma Golden of The New York Times. I once asked Steve why in the world they named the program after an Englishman (Walter Bagehot had been an editor of the Economist a century earlier) and why after someone whose name was sure to be mispronounced. He responded, “Well, we couldn’t think of an eminent American journalist, a Walter Lippmann, of economics. Those who didn’t know his name would just have to learn.”

The name, by the way, is pronounced BADGE-it. The program was renamed the Knight-Bagehot Fellowship in 1987 following a major endowment gift from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Shepard and Golden each ran the program for one year. The directors who followed were Welles, the eminent journalist who passed away in 2010; Mary Bralove, formerly of The Wall Street Journal; Pamela Hollie Kluge from The New York Times; and Pauline Tai from Money magazine. I’ve been director since 1993.

Much has changed in the nearly four decades since the Fellowship was founded. In many ways, the world has gotten smaller as developments in technology and the growth of the Internet have brought us closer together. But one thing has not changed. Business and economics are complicated, and writing about them is risky. Every day holds a chance for mistakes, misunderstandings, and misrepresentations. A careless error in an investment story could cost an investor thousands of dollars.

The fact that business and economics touch people’s lives so directly puts incredible demands on journalists to be accurate, reliable and thorough. Indeed, business journalists must be able to understand the intricacies of the field and write about them in clear, concise, intelligible prose.

The purpose of the Knight-Bagehot program is to reduce the risk of careless reporting through rigorous education, and to empower business reporters to feel more confident in their writing. Increasingly, editors staffing business sections realize that to cover the field effectively, reporters need specialized experience and training. And throughout the years they have become more willing to grant their reporters the nine-month leave of absence that is required to complete the Fellowship.

In May 2013, Columbia will graduate its 38th class of Bagehots, and 342 accomplished journalists will have completed this rigorous program. Nearly a fifth of Bagehot graduates found the fellowship year so invigorating that they applied and were accepted for admission to Columbia Business School to complete an MBA degree.

The majority of Bagehot alumni, including those with MBAs, have remained in the field of journalism and have turned their personal academic enrichment into enriched journalism. Many have gone on to win impressive journalism awards and honors. And several are sharing their knowledge and expertise as teachers and educators.

In 1996, we began recognizing the work of our accomplished alumni by awarding the “Best of Knight-Bagehot” at our annual fundraising dinners. Renamed the Christopher J. Welles Memorial Prize in honor of our esteemed former director, the prize is presented each year to a former Bagehot Fellow whose work best epitomizes Chris’s ideals of thorough reporting, good storytelling, and timeliness.

Some of our winners wrote books, including John Authers, David Wessel, and Greg Farrell, and two of our winners, Caroline Donnelly and Peter Kibiriti, launched new business publications. All of the prize recipients were acknowledged for producing outstanding business journalism, and I am certain that Chris would be proud to know that the prize that bears his name is going to such deserving journalists.

My year as a Bagehot Fellow during Chris’s leadership literally changed my life. And while I could never hope to be the great leader or role model that Chris was, the Knight-Bagehot Program carries on the mission of its founders and continues to transform the lives of those who are fortunate enough to be granted a fellowship.

Eileen Shanahan: 1924-2001. The New York Times

In: Lives 01 Apr 2013 0 comments

Eileen Shanahan

By Sarah Mansur

At Eileen Shanahan’s 50th wedding anniversary, her husband John Waits Jr. recalled the days in 1974 leading up to his wife’s decision to be a named plaintiff in Boylan et al. v New York Times Company.

Six of Shanahan’s female co-workers publicized their names on a lawsuit that charged The New York Times with gender-based discrimination in violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Shanahan was not naïve. She knew the men in the newsroom would respond viciously.

Her youngest daughter Mary Beth Waits recalls what her father said on their anniversary in response to Shanahan’s hesitations.

“He told her, ‘What are you going to tell your daughters when they grow up?’” Waits said. “‘That you had a chance to go do something important, and you were too scared to do it?’”

Shanahan was the seventh named plaintiff of a landmark discrimination case against the Times that challenged the newspaper’s reputation as a progressive and open-minded employer.

“It was one of those things that she felt like despite what the possible ramifications were, it was almost her moral duty,” Waits said.

At the time she joined the lawsuit, she was the leading economics reporter at the Times’ Washington, D.C. bureau. It took her 21 years to earn that position covering the nation’s capital, where she was raised and attended college.

“Washington and its labyrinth politics were no mystery to Eileen,” wrote Nan Robertson in her book “.” “She had been born and raised in the Capital and spent her entire life working there. The will to work hard, to be first and best, had been drummed into her from her earliest years.”

She studied political science at George Washington University during World War II and graduated in 1944, according to the Times’ obituary. While in college, Shanahan worked at the Washington Post as a summer copy boy, a position often filled by males.

It was at the Post that she met her future husband, Waits Jr., who was also a student at George Washington.

Waits said her mother eventually became editor-in-chief of The GW Hatchet, the university’s student newspaper.

“She always said she never would have gotten the job if all the young men had not been away at war,” Waits said about her mother’s editorial position.

During her tenure as editor-in-chief, Shanahan oversaw a series of articles that criticized the university administration. In response, Waits says the administration “blackballed” her mother from graduating with honors as Phi Beta Kappa.

Eileen’s first job after graduation was writing radio copy for the United Press during World War II.

“Ms. Shanahan was one of many women who broke into journalism during those years, when male reporters were off covering the war…When the war ended, she was one of only three women who retained their jobs at UP,” according to Sara Fritz’s obituary from The St. Petersburg Times.

She then worked for Walter Cronkite as his editorial assistant. Shanahan’s oldest daughter Kate said her mother knew Cronkite before he reached widespread fame.

Her next job was at The Journal of Commerce, where she earned her way to being the Times’ top economics reporter, covering D.C. from 1962-1977.

“Mom was an economics reporter at a time when most women reporters did the society page or the garden society circuits or the wedding pages, stuff like that,” Waits said. “Being a domestic economics specialist just didn’t fit the mold.”

“Mom was a person who was very hard working,” added Waits. “…She had a doggedness to be thorough, to get the facts exactly right…She told me she knew the middle initial of literally thousands of government officials in D.C. because she said ‘if you couldn’t get the middle initial right, why should they believe any other fact in the story?’ It has become, for me, a philosophy of how I work in life and she had that quality.”

During her career at the Times, Shanahan covered economics along with the emerging women’s movement and Nixon’s tax fraud in the early 1970s.

In a May 21, 1994, interview for the Washington Press Club Foundation’s Women in Journalism Oral History Project, Shanahan said she was proud of her coverage of Nixon’s tax fraud because “it helped to set the stage for ‘Nixon must go.’”

She said she got a tip from an advocate, who worked for Ralph Nader, that “Nixon might have quite illegally took a huge, hundreds of thousands of dollars, tax deduction for his contribution of his pre-presidential papers to the (National) Archives.”

She said that Congress passed a law making this practice illegal. Through careful leaks from the National Archives and Records Administration, Shanahan said she learned Nixon violated this law.

She said she started making an issue of tax fraud in her coverage at the Times, and this led to an investigation by the non-partisan Joint Committee on Taxation.

“And I think he really thought they wouldn’t find anything,” Eileen said in the 1994 interview. “Well they did.”

In a 2001 NPR interview, former Times reporter Nan Robertson said Shanahan finally left the paper in 1977 because “she felt that she couldn’t get any farther, that she couldn’t be the chief economic correspondent in the Washington bureau.”

“And she decided to leave the Times and become one of the chief name plaintiffs in the sex discrimination suit that the Women’s Caucus of The New York Times filed in 1974,” Robertson said. “This was a class-action suit by the 500 women then hired in all kinds of jobs by the Times.”

In the interview for the Women in Journalism Oral History Project, Shanahan talked about the conversation she had with the Times’ then Managing Editor Clifton Daniel during her job interview.

“He asked me at one point in the interview what my ultimate goal was…I said, ‘Oh, Mr. Daniels, all I want to be is the best reporter and you can’t be the best reporter unless you’re at the best newspaper, and that’s the New York Times.’

“He replied, ‘That’s good, because I can assure you that no woman will ever be an editor at the New York Times.’ The year is 1961: it wasn’t illegal. People said things like that in those days. The law of course that made it illegal to say things like that was passed in ’64, but it didn’t begin to be litigated until the early ’70s. So that’s the way it was.”

She left the Times to work for the government as assistant secretary for public affairs in the Department of Health, Education and Welfare during Jimmy Carter’s administration.

Shanahan returned to journalism as associate editor of the Washington Star and then moved on the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette where she was the assistant managing editor.

Former Post-Gazette editor John Martin said Shanahan hired him twice, as state editor and then managing editor.

“Eileen had a huge respect for facts, and little patience for people who took shortcuts in writing,” Martin said. “Once she did her reporting, she would become an authoritative source on the subject, and that was how she viewed reporting.”

While working for Congressional Quarterly as a tax writer, she met Peter Harkness and they founded Governing magazine in 1987, which covers state and local government.

As her last full-time job, Shanahan worked as the Washington bureau chief of The St. Petersburg Times.

Sarah Mansur, from Chicago, is a senior journalism major at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

William Brewster Styles Award for Business and Economics Journalism

In: Awards 01 Apr 2013 0 comments

Scripps Howard Awards

1998
Richard Read
The Oregonian, Portland

1999
Tom Hallman, Jr.
The Oregonian, Portland

2000
Doris Hajewski
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

2001
The Wall Street Journal

2002
Chicago Tribune

2003
Clint Riley
The Record, Hackensack, N.J.

2004
The Wall Street Journal

2005
The Seattle Times

2006
Steve Everly
Kansas City (Mo.) Star

2007
The Wall Street Journal

2008
Farah Stockman
The Boston Globe

2009
Sarasota (Fla.) Herald-Tribune

2010
Paige St. John
Sarasota (Fla.) Herald-Tribune

2011
ProPublica

2012
Lou Kilzer, Andrew Conte and Jim Wilhelm
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

William A. Doyle: 1925-1996. Syndicated columnist

In: Lives 01 Apr 2013 0 comments

By William Leighton-Armah

William A. Doyle’s “Investor’s Guide,” appeared in more than 100 newspapers and was one of the first financial columns that willingly answered the average personal investor’s questions.

Doyle began writing his column in 1957 and also served as the business editor for the Newark Star-Ledger along with The New York Daily News. He was also vice president of public relations at Investors Diversified of Minneapolis for seven years. This change gave Doyle a chance to pursue another side of writing.

He later decided to go back to The Star-Ledger. Doyle died on April 19, 1996 from emphysema but was able to leave a lasting impact on business journalism.

Doyle graduated from Fairleigh Dickinson University in 1950 and went to the New York World-Telegram & Sun where he covered the stock and commodities markets. He is described as being a man who had knew the markets well and was determined to help readers understand the arcane work of brokerages and banks.

William Doyle “Investors Guide” appeared five times weekly from 1981 to 1985 and Doyle was one of the first financial columnists to answer direct questions from readers. He was always interested in what would be in the best interest of the small investor and made sure to thoroughly answer those questions.

“Doyle was a hard-nosed business reporter and editor,” said Myron Kandel, founding financial news editor for the Cable News Network.

NJBIZ.com reporter Beth Fitzgerald, who began working at The Star-Ledger at age 21, described Doyle as being the role model that she needed in order for her to become the columnist that she is today.

Fitzgerald said, “What I needed at the time was a mentor. I started out as a police reporter and switched to financial reporting to work with Bill Doyle.”

Those who had the opportunity to work with Doyle describe him as a person who was accessible and knew everyone in the business. Doyle was a man who was skilled at getting through the fluff and self-serving nature of the business while always having a sense of humor which often times came off in his columns.

Fitzgerald started working at The Star-Ledger in 1974 and learned how to ask the right questions in order to get at the truth. She said, “Bill Doyle taught me to be skeptical and work hard, we were working in a time when there was no Internet and most high level businessmen could better shield themselves from journalists.”

Fitzgerald worked with Doyle until 1981 and stressed Doyle’s positive impact on who she is today.

Kandel said, “Bill Doyle was one of the pioneers of answering the questions of everyday people. He took his job very seriously, and even if you did not know Bill well you knew how well respected he was in the industry.”

“Investors Guide” provided information for ordinary people and was able to inform millions on brokerage and finance. Answering these personal finance questions differentiated his column from writing intended only for the informed investor. Although the practice that Doyle pioneered is common today, if it were not for the success of “Investors Guide” people might not have begun to take personal finance columns seriously.

Kandel said, “Although I did not know Bill Doyle very well, I know about the impact he had on our industry. He was willing to do something that others were not interested in doing at the time and made it work. He was a serious journalist that had the gift of being able to explain complicated financial situations in a clear a precise way.”

“Investors Guide” became a reliable aid for personal investors. Doyle revolutionized business journalism and is a major part of how journalist do their jobs today. People such as Jim Cramer are now doing exactly what Doyle started more than 30 years ago.

Although Doyle has not gotten the most attention for his work in the field, those who have studied the evolution of business journalism know the impact that was made by Doyle’s work.

William Leighton-Armah attends the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is in the class of 2013. He is a native of Boyds, Md., and majors in business journalism.

Editor’s note: Doyle wrote a 20-year history of SABEW in 1984. It can be found here.