How Blogs are Changing Business Journalism for the Better

Herb Greenberg

is asked:

Q: How do you see online business journalism changing in the next 10

to 20 years?

A: More blurring of the line between what is and what isn’t real

journalism. People whose backgrounds and biases haven’t been vetted

can get instant credibility, through sites like Seeking Alpha, which can result

in blog posts that get included under a ticker on Yahoo Finance. This is chipping

away at the value of what we do. Doesn’t mean what they do

isn’t good work. It certainly increases the competition.

God knows there aren’t nearly enough Herb Greenbergs – the kind of journalists

who spend hours poring over SEC filings, trying to make sense of what companies

are reporting. It’s a noble calling, and a skill that the likes of Greenberg

(or Peter Eavis, or Floyd Norris) has honed over the years. But clearly you

don’t need to be a journalist to do it: the people who do it best are the short-sellers

who are the very best sources for such journalists. In any case, anything which

"increases the competition" in terms of the supply of this kind of

material is a decidedly positive development.

I also think that Greenberg is doing himself something of a disservice if he

thinks that people read and trust him because he’s been "vetted" by

his employer. Not at all: I’m quite comfortable saying that people trust Herb

Greenberg more than they trust Marketwatch. Remember that in any kind

of poll, journalists barely beat out politicians in terms of trustworthiness.

So the posters on Seeking Alpha go through exactly the same credibility-building

process that Greenberg and Eavis and Norris did: they publish their analysis,

open it up to public examination, and if their material consistently withstands

scrutiny, people start to trust them. In no way does this chip away at the value

of what journalists do; in fact, it is what journalists do. The difference

between the Seeking Alpha posters and what Greenberg calls "real"

journalists is basically just that "real" journalists get paid by

news organizations, while the Seeking Alpha posters (generally) don’t.

But in these days when there is no shortage of incompetent editors at business

sections throughout the country, I wouldn’t assume that a random journalist

was any more trustworthy than a random financial blogger. In both cases, I would

judge their material on its merits. In that sense, the rise of blogging is helping

the cause of financial journalism, in that it’s creating a generation of engaged

and critical readers. If your readers are sheep who believe whatever you write

just because it’s in the paper, that breeds complacency and laziness. But no

US journalist is in that position today.

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