One of the many reasons I started this blog is that most journalists would rather talk about journalism than actually do it. (At least us economists, for all our inaction, never said we were going to do commerce.)
That’s what’s happening right now at paidContent’s Future of Business Media shindig. The Wall Street Journal folks are going on about how they’re not owned by Rupie yet. Devin Wenig at Reuters is trying to pretend his merger with Thomson is a big deal compared with the Dow Jones deal. Come on! I even rang the FCC and told them not to bother looking into any anticompetitive implications of that one.
What should the future of business journalism be? The most exciting and insightful thing business media could do is reprint my speeches unabridged. Perhaps they could copy in Mishkin’s spellbinding speech on the Federal Reserve as a liquidity provider. Think what a few good illustration could do to illuminate that framework.
Instead, it’s clear what we’ll be getting: More puff lifestyle pieces a la Forbes.com and WSJ Weekend, and more boobs a la FBN and CNBC.
One of Forbes.com’s investors, Roger McNamee, called magazines “a light thing you can read on the toilet”. (Steve Forbes must be rolling in his grave.) Personally, I wouldn’t mind getting the Internet installed in my bathroom.
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