Business reporting makes gains |
||
Sam Tzou likes likes to write. But he also likes money. In a stock market game for school last year, he and his classmate started off with an imaginary $10,000 portfolio. At the end of five months, that imaginary portfolio was worth $78 million. “If you went in business, you wouldn’t get to write as much,” Tzou, of Midland, Mich., said. “I would miss that a lot. They [business people] don’t really know the movement of the money and how the public thinks. I think that’s a more special part of it.” After hearing Desiree Hanford’s lecture, ‘Numbers in Journalism,’ Tzou knows he can combine his interest in both. Hanford, who worked as a Dow Jones & Co. reporter for 10 years, encouraged cherubs at the National High School Institute to merge business with their love of writing. “I didn’t even know there was a business side to journalism until her lecture,” Bridgette FitzGibbons, of Longmont, Colo., said. Andrew Lee, of Los Angeles, felt that business journalists have a power that few others have. “Every morning all the investment bankers, hedge fund guys, they pour over business reporting every morning,” Lee said. “To be the person behind all that information, there’s so much power over their speculations and investments.” Lee asked Hanford one question: How much power do you have? Hanford said she had enough information to manipulate the stock market. “It seems like maintaining confidentiality would be a big challenge in business journalism,” Lee said. When the housing market bubble burst, Emily Hatton's father tried to explain to her in simple terms what had happened. This is when Hatton realized that there was need for business journalism. “It’s really fun to explain to people who wouldn’t understand it otherwise,” Hatton, of Chevy Chase, Md., said. “It’s really important to be able to understand it.” |
