IF YOU’RE READING the business section, you need to read between the lines. Here are 14 things financial journalists won’t tell you:
- That unbelievably telling anecdote at the top of my article? I scoured the country for three weeks to find that schmuck.
- The Dow industrials fell 263 points today. Why? By the time deadline arrives, I’ll have cooked up a reason.
- What qualifications do I possess? An ability to dial a telephone.
- Actually, I always wanted to be a sports reporter.
- Today, I had to bang out a long feature story on the mortgage market. My editor is looking to buy a new house.
- What qualifications do my sources possess? A willingness to pick up the receiver.
- If you saw my portfolio, you’d never ask me for financial advice.
- In the story, the company’s PR guy is quoted as saying, “no comment.” But on background, the senior counsel sung like a bird.
- The more the market falls, the giddier the newsroom gets.
- I don’t understand collateralized mortgage obligations, but I just wrote 1,000 words about them.
- My sources aren’t nearly as articulate as I make them sound.
- That joking, throwaway comment that the CFO made as we hung up? It’ll be in the second paragraph.
- We’ll get the online version up now, and figure out the real story for the print edition.
- I want my editors and sources to think I’m smart. What about readers? Yeah, I guess they’re also important.