Sylvia Porter

By Kathleen Hayes

Financial reporter and columnist Sylvia Porter was groundbreaking. She was the first female in the field, and her approach to financial reporting and advising broke business jargon into simple terms. She devoted herself to helping middle class Americans understand the changing economy and save and invest wisely.

Porter was born on June 18, 1913, to a Russian-Jewish immigrant family in Patchogue, N.Y. Her father was a physician, but when he died when Porter was 12 years old, her mother started a business making and selling hats.

In the late 1920s, Porter’s mother lost all her $30,000 in savings in the stock market. When the market crashed in 1929, Porter switched her major at Hunter College from history and English literature to economics. Porter’s successor in writing the personal finance column, Kathy Kristof, said Porter wanted “to understand what was making her life — and the lives of everyone around her — so miserable.”

In 1932, Porter married a bank employee, Reed R. Porter, and graduated from Hunter College magna cum laude.

Immediately after, Porter started working at a Wall Street small investment counseling firm to learn about currency fluctuations, the stock and bond markets, and business cycles. At the same time, she got her MBA from New York University.

In 1934, Porter began her career in financial writing. She wrote a thrice-weekly financial column called “S.F. Porter Says” for the New York Post and used the byline S.F. Porter to conceal her gender. The Post told her to do so, as men dominated the field, and the paper feared a female writer would not be taken seriously. However, Forbes investment writer John Wasik said that Porter revolutionized the industry; “Prior to Porter, financial columns were mostly men writing about stocks they liked,” he said.

One of Porter’s competitors, Jane Bryant Quinn, said ironically she and Porter ended up defining personal finance as women’s work. Quinn said, “The upside of this was that it attracted female readers – women who probably hadn’t had much to do with their own personal finances. As the divorce rate grew, and as more women entered the workforce and had to make more decisions on their own, the presence of female voices was especially helpful.”

By 1938, Porter became the Post’s financial editor, yet it was not until 1942 that most of Porter’s readers realized their trusted financial guide was a woman, let alone a 29 year-old. Once this news was out, Porter used it as an asset and decided to become a broadcaster on New York’s News Talk Radio WJZ “What Can I Do?” program.

She quickly climbed the ladder to success, because she informed and advised in a way that was easily understandable, and she was not afraid to expose financial corruption in government and businesses.

Porter was an activist as well as a writer; she boldly criticized government officials for their fiscal policies but also advised several U.S. presidents. Porter’s personal finance column reached more than 40 million readers at its peak and was syndicated by The Los Angeles Times and 450 other newspapers around the world.

Porter also began a column in The American Banker on the United States government securities market and then started an information service on government bonds. She was a leader in the start of the U.S. Savings Bond program and bought bonds herself. Kristof said that Porter “amassed a fortune the old fashioned way — getting rich slowly through consistent savings and hard work.” Porter wanted America to be a level playing field but also urged individuals to take personal responsibility.

Additionally, Porter wrote all kinds of books, primarily on taxes, saving, and investing. In 1939, Porter published “How To Make Money in Government Bonds,” which was the first book to ever cover all government finance and explain it in simple terms. Seeing the need for more streamlined news, Porter wrote “If War Comes to the American Home” to explain the country’s national defense.

Beginning in 1960, Porter published “Sylvia Porter’s Income Tax Guide,” which she published annually until she died more than 30 years later.

In 1961, Porter gave a speech titled “Business News for Everyone” to the Associated Press Managing Editors Association in which she explained her finding that people want to read business news, if they could understand it. She said, “We in America are living through the most profound, glorious income revolution in all history, which means that for the first time the vast majority of Americans are earning enough income to be acutely interested in reading in simple language about trends in jobs, paychecks, living costs, and taxes.”

In 1978, after 43 years with the Post, Porter began working for New York Daily News. Porter also wrote monthly articles for the Ladies’ Home Journal from 1965 to 1982.

In 1975, she published one of her most successful books, “.”

Dr. Tracy Lucht of Iowa State University’s Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication is writing a biography of Porter and said Porter “showed that the middle class had real economic power, as the U.S. became a consumer society. Porter was an absolute hawk on inflation and persuaded many people to look for bargains on everything, from life insurance to the food they put on the table.”

Keeping up with the changing times, Porter also endorsed and attached her name to a series of personal finance software packages for home computers in the 1980s.

Porter’s last two books were “Your Finances in the 1990s” and “Planning Your Retirement,” which she worked on in her final months before she died on June 5, 1991.

Porter received 14 honorary doctoral degrees for her leadership in financial journalism and advising.

Kathleen Hayes is a business journalism major and Morehead-Cain scholar from Wilmington, N.C. Hayes has interned and studied in Tanzania, India, and Australia and is pursuing a career in consulting. Her interests include tennis and education in developing countries.

Gary Klott

By Stacey Northup

The memory of Gary Klott continues to have great influence on the Society of American Business Editors and Writers’ code of ethics. Throughout the ethically challenging times in the world of business journalism, Klott educated members and encouraged them to follow a strong code.

Klott was born on Oct. 4, 1949, in Albany Park, Ill., where he was raised.  After graduating from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1971 with a degree in economics, Klott served as a lieutenant in the Navy in Vietnam.  Until 1974, he was a communications officer aboard the USS Kitty Hawk, according to his obituary in The New York Times.

Following his time in the Navy, Klott began his journalism career.  He spent a little time as a television reporter at a small station in Nebraska but quickly moved on to start a small paper in Kankakee, Illinois.  Then, he went to work at the Ft. Lauderdale Sun Sentinel and soon after, Klott became a tax reporter for The Times, covering tax law changes.

This was quickly followed by a position as a columnist for the newspaper writing the “Tax Watch” column.  Klott then left his job at The Times to write three different syndicated personal finance and tax columns, including one syndicated by Tribune Media Services, in the late 1980s.  He would write on tax laws, real estate and personal finance for these columns.

With such great knowledge on the topic of taxes, Klott founded the website TaxPlanet.com in 1999, offering information about personal taxes.  The advice was read by both individuals and tax professionals.  The website garnered dozens of national awards and Money magazine rated it one of the top 50 financial websites, according to Klott’s obituary in The Los Angeles Times.

Klott also authored three books.  “,” “” and “The Complete Financial Guide to the 1990s” all stemmed from his knowledge and expertise of taxes and personal finance.

“Gary was a very gifted writer,” said Randall D. Smith, former president of SABEW.  “Not only a gifted writer, but he understood some of the most complex things and put them in the simplest terms.  When you read his stories and columns, you understood what he was trying to get across.” In the February/March 2001 issue of The Business Journalist, Klott offered advice to other business journalists on how to cover taxes.

Klott was active in SABEW for many years, and aggressively championed elevated standards of ethical behavior, particularly serving as the president of SABEW in 1994-1995. “We don’t think about taxes or personal finance with Gary, but mostly ethics,” said Smith.  “The reason why is because Gary led a lot of discussions.  He kept us morally straight during a challenging time in the ’90s when there was a lot of money floating around and great temptation for business journalists.”

Klott’s wife, Sandra Duerr, executive editor of The San Luis Obispo Tribune, had similar thoughts: “Gary was best known for his coverage of tax issues, development of the critically acclaimed TaxPlanet.com and pushing SABEW to strengthen its ethics code in 1991 to address advertising encroachment to retain the integrity of business journalism.”

From 1991-1992, Klott chaired SABEW’s Futures Committee.  A majority of this committee’s recommendations received unanimous support from the board at a November 1991 meeting.

Duerr said these recommendations included, “distinguished achievement awards (an annual writing contest and separate awards for lifetime achievement in business journalism); a 24-hour jobs hotline; an electronic bulletin board; a bi-monthly president’s newsletter; a stepped-up membership campaign; an outreach program for minority journalists; and a greater focus on ethics.”

On Aug. 10, 2002, Klott died of a massive heart attack in his home in San Luis Obispo.  He was 52.

Due to Klott’s strong sense of ethics that guided every step of his career, Duerr, along with Klott’s brothers David and Richard Klott, created the Gary L. Klott Business Journalism Ethics Fund after his death.  This fund is committed to championing the cause of ethics in business journalism.

“His influence broadened when he began working for The New York Times and continued on his own,” said Duerr, who was also a SABEW president.  “That’s due not only to the depth and quality of his work nationwide on taxes and personal finance, but also his leadership with SABEW and the news industry on ethics.”

“Gary accomplished a great deal in his relatively short life,” said Duerr.

SABEW’s 11th business journalism ethics symposium held in Klott’s name will be held in 2013.  The seminar focuses on topical, relevant issues every year and allows discussion for how people would response in various ethical situations.

Stacey Northup is a native of Raleigh, N.C. ,and a Journalism and Mass Communication major in the Class of 2013 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Chris Welles

By Rachel Butt

Chris Welles never stopped shaking up his work life.

From the 1960s to the mid 1980s, the award-winning business journalist pulled back the curtain on financial shenanigans, headed the Walter Bagehot Fellowship Program at Columbia University (now the Knight-Bagehot Fellowship in Economics and Business Journalism), and authored a book on the oil shale industry, “The Elusive Bonanza,” and a book on Wall Street after fixed commission ended, “.”

The Princeton graduate started as a fact-checker in the entertainment department at Life magazine, and was promoted to be a writer after he wrote a story about a real estate developer.

In 1968, Welles wrote an expose story on the oil industry’s failure to develop oil shale reserves, which was killed by the management of Life under pressure from the industry.

Welles was fired within months after he became the magazine’s business editor when he sold the oil shale story to Harper’s Magazine, which sparked much controversy.

“His oil shale story was a huge business topic at that time” and is once again in the news due to the growth and controversy over fracking, said Amey Stone, MSN Money’s deputy managing editor and a former colleague of Welles at BusinessWeek (now Bloomberg Businessweek).  “He really was very much able to predict the huge trend.”

Welles continued to wrestle with the domestic oil industry after he was made the director of the Bagehot Program in 1977. During his eight-year tenure, Welles had to balance on a tightrope between fundraising and reporting.

In his early freelance stories, Welles had written critically about the oil industry, and produced numerous articles for magazines such as Esquire, New York and Institutional Investor.

As soon as his appointment was announced, Mobil Oil withdrew its support of $50,000 to the academic fellowship.

“I know that’s not easy,” said Steven Shepard, a former editor of BusinessWeek and the first director of the Bagehot program. “There were times when we took fewer fellows… despite this, the program survived.”

Welles ran the Bagehot program and taught business journalism to mid-career journalists until 1985.

William Glasgall, a Knight-Bagehot Fellow, said he appreciated the flexibility of the curriculum and Welles’ tough examination of businesses.

“Chris just embodied the best of journalism, which is to be very careful with your reporting, be persistent, and never take ‘no’ for answer,” said Glasgall, managing editor for states and municipalities at Bloomberg News.

Welles did not stay as a professor for long because his heart was in journalism, and he felt a conflict between his role as a journalist and his role as fundraiser, his wife, Nancy said.

He joined BusinessWeek in January 1986, bringing a good mixture of scholarly disposition and journalist disposition to the magazine.

Joseph Weber, who knew Welles as a teacher at Columbia and later as an editor at BusinesWeek, said Welles had a take-no-prisoner’s attitude toward bigwig economists or CEOs.

He remembers how Welles stood up against Donald Trump when the real estate magnate demanded  more favorable coverage of the casino operation’s bankruptcy in the early 1990s.

 “Chris didn’t offer any response to Trump’s deal-making suggestions,” Weber said. “He was very disciplined about it, and he was very fair-minded when we put the story together.”

In hope of expanding Welles’ effectiveness, Shepard eventually promoted him to be an editor

“There’s a saying that we get the best on Welles for every two months, but his influence will be multiplied if he served as an editor,” Shepard said.

As a senior editor in the finance department, Welles tackled complex issues in Wall Street and the banking industry amidst the eruption of insider trading scandals.

While the magazine had extensive coverage of the scandal involving junk-bond king Michael Milken, Welles was exhaustive in covering BusinessWeek’s own insider-trading scandal. “It was an indication of my trust for Chris to go to the bottom with it,” Shepard said.

As a journalist, Welles is best known for the clarity and thoroughness of his reporting. Seymour Zucker, senior editor of BusinessWeek, said, “The truth was primarily in his way of looking at things.”

Welles also worked for The Saturday Evening Post and The Los Angeles Times. He received numerous awards, including the prestigious Gerald Loeb Award, a National Magazine Award, and the 1997 Distinguished Achievement Award of the Society of American Business Editors and Writers.

Although Welles enjoyed the intensity of highs from reporting, he took an early retirement with BusinessWeek and decided to pursue photography. Three months after he retired, he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.

His approach to journalism – best captured with the phrases “Question Authority” and “No reprint, no losses”– was reprinted on small, hand-held fans at his memorial service in July 2010. He was 72 and lived in Brooklyn.

Rachel Butt is a native of Hong Kong and a business journalism major in the Class of 2013 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

By Shelley Watkins

James (Jim) Michaels’ contributions to journalism have been largely forgotten by today’s writers, but to his contemporaries and those at Forbes who worked with him, Michaels was a legend who transformed the world of business journalism.

Michaels was known for trying to make a “business critic” out of journalists. He felt that an article should be told like a story, one that captivates and keeps the readers’ attention. He capitalized on the idea that journalism was like show business. He believed this to be done by creating a unified piece.

Michaels expected his writers to start with an anecdote and end with that same anecdotal reference. If the story was written correctly there could be a reference dropped perfectly in the middle.

Michaels was born in Buffalo, N.Y., on June 17, 1921. During his twenties, Michaels attended Culver Military Academy in Indiana and later graduated from Harvard University with a bachelor’s degree in economics. At the outbreak of World War II, Michaels joined the military.

By 1943 a young Michaels was accepted into the American Field Service and sent to Bombay, India. Upon being relieved from his war duties, Michaels stayed in India and refined his writing skills while working for the United Press wire service.

Michaels’ distinctive writing career truly began in the 1940s with his time in India. At that time, Michaels was working in India as a political journalist and began to write some of the biggest stories of his life. In 1948, Michaels broke the story of the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, setting his place as a forerunner in the changes that were to come in journalism.

Constantly in the center of India’s political turmoil, Michaels became known for his investigative stories, which would later be a driving force in transforming the identity of Forbes magazine.

Michaels was editor at Forbes from 1961 to 1999. In 1954, when Forbes hired Michaels, business journalism was said to be “a place where publications dumped their drunks and burned-out sportswriters.”

Michaels’ unique approach to editing and column writing changed the image of business journalism from one that was boring, dull, and unreadable to one that told who was doing well, who wasn’t, and why. Michaels transformed business journalism into a fascinating stage of drama, triumphs, and tragedies.

Former senior editor Dick Stern remembers Michaels. “He was by far the brightest editor, had tremendous historical understanding of the markets, and was an absolutely brilliant wordsmith,” said Stern. “He would make articles pop off the page.”

Two of the most remembered concepts that Michaels strived to embed in his writers were the ideas of being original and of being concise. Michaels’ main concern was the reader. He did not want to bore his readers with useless information. He wanted to give his readers exciting stories that were straightforward and focused on the relevant points.

Michaels expected great work from his employees. Former Forbes writer Gretchen Morgensen described Michaels as being demanding in what he expected from his articles. “Either you had to be first or you had to be completely different from other reporters,” she said. “And God help you if you weren’t coming up with what he wanted.”

Around the Forbes office, Michaels’ harsh personality struck fear in most people’s hearts.

“Many people were afraid of him, but there was a cadre of people who were willing to go in and fight with him,” remembered Stern.

Though Michaels was a tough critique, the people who worked for him learned effective ways of writing.

Stern described his time with Michaels when he explained, “Thirteen years at Forbes working with Michaels was like a master’s or doctoral course in how to understand business and do business journalism.”

Fortune senior editor at large Allan Sloan felt that Michaels was a reason for why he is a successful writer today. “Forbes was a great place to work for someone who was a self-starter,” said Sloan.

Michaels would drive his writers to seek out original, inventive stories that had yet to be covered by other publications.

“He didn’t teach; he led,” remarked Sloan.

Michaels took business journalism out of the shadows and transformed it into one of the leading topics of today’s society. Though the general population may not revere him, his legacies will remain vital in how business journalism continues to grow and flourish throughout the world.

“Forbes in the heyday was known for celebrating business,” said Stern. “It wasn’t just a cheerleader, it was accountable journalism.”

Shelley Watkins is a senior public relations major at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Born and raised in Atlanta, Ga., she hopes to someday return to the Peach state to work for a PR firm.

Dan Dorfman

By Callie Bost

Dan Dorfman was one of the most influential business journalists and a proponent of get-rich-quick stock picking.

But Myron Kandel remembers “Danny” as the stout journalist who had a penchant for gourmet food, wine and Mickey Mouse neckties.

“He was a rather short guy with a squeaky voice, but he was a very determined reporter,” said Kandel, who worked with Dorfman at the New York Herald Tribune and CNN.

Dorfman, who was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., on Oct. 24, 1929, took a less traditional path than most in business journalism. Dorfman’s parents divorced when he was young, leaving him in a Brooklyn orphanage for two years. Dorfman never went to college. Instead, he attended the New York School of Printing, a vocational high school, before enlisting in the Army. Dorfman started his journalism career as a copyboy for Fairchild Publications, Kandel said.

“If anybody could be described as self-made, it was (Dorfman),” Kandel said. “He came from very humble beginnings.”

Dorfman was hired as a retail reporter on the garment industry for Women’s Wear Daily, a Fairchild publication. At that same time, Kandel was covering the retail beat for The New York Times. Kandel joined the Herald Tribune in 1964 as the financial editor. In 1965, Dorfman was the first journalist Kandel hired at the Herald Tribune.

While at the Herald Tribune, Kandel and Dorfman became great friends. Kandel discovered Dorfman’s knack for investigative reporting.

“Pound for pound, Danny was one of the best reporters I ever knew. He was insatiable in pursuing the story,” Kandel said.

One night while leaving the Herald Tribune’s newsroom, Myron Kandel noticed Dorfman on the phone at his desk. At the time, Dorfman was working on a story about American businessman Meshulam Riklis, but Riklis would not talk with Dorfman about his latest acquisition.

After exhausting all avenues of communication, Kandel said Dorfman decided to call Riklis’ wife.

“Dan said, ‘Mrs. Riklis, do you think it’s right that your husband won’t talk to me?’” Kandel recalled. “That was persistence – that was how hard-working Danny was.”

In the late 1960s, Dorfman moved to The Wall Street Journal to write “Heard on the Street,” a daily investing column. True to the column’s name, Dorfman would talk to Wall Street traders about what stocks could see movement that day and write a column based on these tips.

The “Heard on the Street” column was different from the investigative reporting that Dorfman did for Women’s Wear Daily and the Herald Tribune. Dorfman focused on more exclusive, breaking news for “Heard on the Street.”

Barney Calame was a reporter for The Journal in Washington while Dorfman was working at the paper’s New York City office.

“(The ‘Heard on the Street’ column) was very secretive,” Calame said. “The (WSJ) was very careful about limiting who knew what was running in the column in the next day.”

Eventually, Dorfman left The Journal for New York Magazine, where he returned to his investigative roots by writing “Bottom Line,” a column focusing on behind-the-scenes issues in business.

“After his Wall Street Journal days, there were other people who hired him and wanted him to be very explosive…I don’t think the (WSJ) wanted him to be far out or bold in his writing,” Calame said.

Following his time at New York Magazine, Dorfman wrote financial columns for Esquire, USA Today, The Daily News and later, Money magazine.

Dorfman found his way into broadcast business journalism when he became a regular contributing columnist for CNN’s business news in 1980. At the time, Kandel was the financial editor at CNN. Kandel said Dorfman engaged in casual, lively banter on air instead of sticking to formal broadcast norms.

“(Dorfman) was the closest thing to a Damon Runyon character that business journalism has ever had,” Kandel said, referring to the famous Broadway author from the early 1900s. “He was a refreshing face on television; he was not the kind of face or voice on national television that people expected. His boundless energy captivated many people.”

Dorfman’s most-famous broadcasting stint was in the early 1990s at CNBC, where he was featured in daily, three-minute segments with his stock buy-or-sell recommendation for investors. Dorfman gathered his stock tips from various Wall Street sources, but he never disclosed who these sources were.

Paul Steiger, executive chairman at ProPublica, worked as a reporter at the The Journal and later became its managing editor. Steiger and Dorfman never crossed paths at the paper, but Steiger said he was familiar with Dorfman’s ability to dramatically move the market with his reports.

“He was a phenomenon,” Steiger said. “He was a stock picker, not as an analyst, who could move markets.”

Dorfman’s effect on the market was so pervasive that in the mid-1990s, the Chicago Stock Exchange began halting activity on a stock that Dorfman recommended in the minutes after his report. NASDAQ proposed the same rule to the Securities and Exchange Commission in 1996.

In an April 1996 interview with the Seattle Times, Dorfman said he supported these rules.

“Anything that can make for more orderly markets makes sense,” Dorfman said to the Seattle Times.

According to The Times, Dorfman was earning almost $1 million annually from his gigs at CNBC and Money, making him one of the highest-paid business journalists of the 1990s.

Dorfman’s career hit a roadblock in 1995 when BusinessWeek magazine reported that the U.S. Attorney General was investigating Dorfman’s relationship with Donald Kessler, a public relations professional who was under investigation for insider trading. In 1996, in the middle of the federal investigation, Money fired Dorfman because he would not reveal his sources.

Dorfman said the allegations were unfounded in a 2008 interview with Chris Roush, a business journalism professor at UNC-Chapel Hill.

“(BusinessWeek) would never admit it, but that was a bogus story, and they now know it,” Dorfman said to Roush. “I told them I had never been contacted by the Justice Department. Thirteen years later, no one has ever contacted me from the Justice Department.”

Allan Sloan, a senior editor-at-large at Fortune, wrote a Newsweek column in 1995 addressing BusinessWeek’s accusations against Dorfman. In the column, Sloan dismissed the accusations as false but warned readers about Dorfman’s “quick hit” stock recommendations.

“Dan did things that were sloppy, but nobody ever charged it as illegal,” Sloan said in a phone interview.

Kessler ultimately pleaded guilty to securities fraud and tax evasion charges. Dorfman was never charged or convicted on any allegations.

In May 1996, Dorfman suffered a mild stroke that ended his broadcast career. After his stroke, Dorfman wrote for The New York Sun, Financial World magazine and various websites.

Dorfman died on June 16, 2012.

In his interview with Roush, Dorfman said that he did not want people to remember him for the money, fame or stock tips, but by his propensity to give back.

“On my tombstone, I would like it to read, “Here lies Dan Dorfman, a reporter who cared,’” Dorfman said. “All that I’ve tried to do is to give to the masses what was known to a chosen few.”

Sloan knows this side of Dorfman well. Sloan credits Dorfman for taking interest in him when Sloan was a young journalist living in Detroit in the 1970s – a period, Sloan said, “when people at The New York Times wouldn’t even return my phone calls or take me seriously.”

Sloan said he would occasionally travel east to New York to visit family. During one of these visits, Dorfman agreed to have lunch with Sloan and talk to him about Sloan’s budding journalism career. In the 1990s, Dorfman invited Sloan to join him at Money. Sloan declined and instead joined Newsweek.

“He was this enormous star, and I was nothing, and he went out of his way to be really nice to me,” Sloan said. “I try to do the same with people today.”

Callie Bost is a senior at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication. She will intern this summer at Bloomberg News in New York.