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The Historical Evolution of Economic, Business, and Financial Journalism
Abstract
The news and economic activity are two closely related phenomena. Ever since writing helped human beings to manage in society, the recording and transmission of relevant information about events related to their economic and commercial activities have been essential tasks. However, it was not until the sixteenth century, one hundred years after Gutenberg developed the use of movable type, and during a period of great commercial expansion resulting from the discovery and exploitation of the New World, that we can speak of the creation of stable and advanced systems for the dissemination of economic news. Since then, the development of economic journalism has been marked by the intersection of historical events in several interrelated fields: the history of economics and finance, the history of economic thought, the history of technology, and the history of media and journalism. This chapter examines this evolution in five stages, coinciding with the development of commercial capitalism (price currents), industrial capitalism (economic magazines), financial capitalism (financial newspapers and business magazines), state capitalism (economic newspapers, business sections in general dailies, and the first audiovisual business news), and popular capitalism (popularization of business and economic news and development of multimedia content). In all of these phases, economic and financial booms and busts, the struggle between new and old economic ideas, certain social and political changes, the emergence of new professions, and the implementation of technological advances have been the key factors in the configuration of economic and business journalism.
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The Economist posee una identidad única, distintiva, que resulta de un conjunto de cualidades mantenidas a lo largo de siglo y medio, y otras incorporadas conforme se ha desarrollado su actividad de difusión de ideas, juicios, opiniones y hechos. Al hilo de su historia, el presente estudio procura analizar la identidad de la revista desde una triple dimensión: editorial, empresarial, corporativa.
th century the literary system was rather undifferentiated in many European countries. Authors of fiction and 'men of letters' in general served the same printers. It was sometimes difficult to distinguish between the kind of contributions that were printed in newspapers and those printed in other publications: book, journals etc. 1 In the last decades of the 19 th century, however, publishing in general was in transition from loose and informal ar- rangements to a more formalised work organisation. In many countries the press became a regular news- paper industry addressed to a mass market with the help of the new and fabulously efficient technology of printing. Sharply falling prices for newsprint opened the market for many new competitors and started a boom in circulation from which all seemed to benefit, new and old newspapers alike. Other traits of the period were increased advertising and a fierce competition. 2 An emerging new journalism fo- cused on a variety of news for a heterogeneous au- dience, and more regular work routines for newspa- permen, news-workers, journalists - or whatever was the favourite term for an aspiring profession. This was a new breed of writers for the 20 th cen- tury, quite different from the gentleman publicist and literate of most of the 19 th century. When reporters moved from the street, bars and coffeehouses into more sheltered offices inside newspaper palaces in the metropolis of the modern world, and when journalism became a full-time job of some magnitude, the qualifications in demand also changed. Editors and journalists did not regu- larly belong to the educated upper class any more. The inevitable question became: Who shall be con- sidered a journalist? Some sort of trade-organisation could most ef- fectively answer this question. Journalists started to organise like most other trades in the late 19 th
En las dos últimas décadas del siglo XX, la información económica se ha convertido en uno de los contenidos esenciales de los medios de comunicación. Sin embargo, para entender este fenómeno es necesario analizar la emergencia de la economía y los negocios como tema de actualidad general durante la crisis económica de los setenta. En la mayoría de los países occidentales, en ese período se consolidó definitivamente el sector de la prensa económica como ámbito informativo especializado; el periodismo económico comenzó a asentarse desde el punto de vista profesional; y los principales medios generalistas consideraron por primera vez que las noticias económicas ocupaban un lugar de importancia en su agenda informativa.
The European economic crisis has been ongoing since 2008 and while austerity has spread over the continent, it has failed to revive economies. The media have played an important ideological role in presenting the policies of economic and political elites in a favourable light, even if the latter's aim has been to shift the burden of adjustment onto citizens. This book explains how and why, using a critical political economic perspective and focusing on the case of Ireland. Throughout, Ireland is compared with contemporary and historical examples to contextualise the arguments made. The book covers the housing bubble that led to the crash, the rescue of financial institutions by the state, the role of the European institutions and the International Monetary Fund, austerity, and the possibility of leaving the eurozone for Europe's peripheral countries. Through a systematic analysis of Ireland's main newspapers, it is argued that the media reflect elite views and interests and downplay alternative policies that could lead to more progressive responses to the crisis.
Due to its peculiar nature, the economic and financial press, throughout history, has had a particular liberty of action in times of tight media controls imposed by the authorities. Both the type of content that it spreads – technical information useful for markets and businesses – and its limited public visibility – with tiny, but influential, audiences – have facilitated this media’s carte blanche to influence elite public opinion in moments of profound political and economic change. This phenomenon can be analysed in some detail around the processes of the political transitions experienced in many authoritarian and totalitarian regimes in the last third of the 20th century. As discussed in this article, economic publications played an important role in changing the mindset of the ruling classes in Argentina, Spain, Russia, China and South Africa, before and after political changes, during times when freedom of the press was restricted for other media.
To make readers pay for news content has always been a fundamental way to generate revenues for the press and an essential part of its business model. However, the arrival of the internet in the mid-1990s changed this business logic for many newspapers, as they delivered their content on the internet for free, waiting for a return based almost exclusively on advertising revenues. For more than a decade, most publishers adopted the new logic of gratis online news for readers. But this started to change, especially after the 2008 financial crisis. This article analyses the history of this change in the business strategy of the press, reflecting the introduction of different payment systems, and finally paywalls, to generate revenues for online newspapers. The study distinguishes four stages in the evolution of journalistic paywalls and points out the interest in considering the process of paywall adoption as a retro-innovation. This brief history of paywalls also shows how some prestigious brands, certain business leaders and a few specialized fields of journalistic activity—such as the economic and business press—have made a considerable contribution to the growing popularity of new payment systems among media companies.
A diverse and dynamic branch of American journalism, the specialized business press has helped to shape our trades, our industries, our businesses, our professions--our economic way of life. This volume provides a glimpse into the specialized business press. It includes profiles, arranged alphabetically, of some 70 periodicals, reflecting the diversity of the specialized business press. The selection of journals was based on the publication's historical importance, dominance in the field, and editorial excellence. Each entry provides a historical profile of the journal, a discussion of its editorial policies, personnel, and changes throughout its development, and concludes with appended bibliographic and source information and historical data. The work provides a valuable source of information on these journals.
This book, inspired partly by journalism's failure to raise early warning flags in the run up to financial crises and by the rise of (economic) populism in recent years, puts forward a framework for economic journalism. It argues that that independent quality economic journalism is essential to the functioning of both the market and democracy but is under threat, and explores questions raised by the decline of media trust: what is the value of economic journalism? And how can journalists change their practices to counter this decline? The book takes a global approach with one chapter focusing on European integration and concludes with an outlook on the future of economic journalism, and the financing of journalism more widely.
International news-agencies, such as Reuters, the Associated Press and Agence France-Presse, have long been ‘unsung heroes’ of the media sphere. From the mid-nineteenth century, in Britain, the US, France and, to a lesser extent, Germany, a small number of agencies have fed their respective countries with international news reports. They informed governments, businesses, media and, indirectly, the general public. They helped define ‘news’. Drawing on years of archival research and first-hand experience of major news agencies, this book provides a comprehensive history of the leading news agencies based in the UK, France and the USA, from the early 1800s to the present day. It retraces their relations with one another, with competitors and clients, and the types of news, information and data they collected, edited and transmitted, via a variety of means, from carrier-pigeons to artificial intelligence. It examines the sometimes colourful biographies of agency newsmen, and the rise and fall of news agencies as markets and methods shifted, concluding by looking to the future of the organisations.
This book assesses the extent to which British news organizations gave exposure and credence to different political interpretations of economics and business news in the decade before the 2008 Financial Crisis. Through the content analysis of some 1,600 news items, this study provides compelling empirical evidence to inform often theoretical debates about neoliberal assumptions in the media. In each of the three pre-2008 case studies – economic globalization, private finance and public services, and Tesco – Merrill finds that the Telegraph, The Times, the Sunday Times and, to varying extents, the Guardian-Observer and the BBC gave limited exposure and credence to ideas from the left of the political spectrum. As such, he builds an important comparative picture of economic, business and financial journalism in the period before the defining event of the decade, the effects of which continue to resonate.
This book explores the impact of the print and broadcast media on public knowledge and understanding of the 2008 Great Financial Crisis. It represents the first systemic attempt to analyse how mass media influenced public opinion and political events during this key period in Britain's economic history. To do this, the book combines analysis of media content, focus groups with members of the public and interviews with leading news journalists and editors in order to unpack the production, content and reception of economic news.
From the banking crisis to the debate over Britain's public deficit, this book explores the key role of the press and broadcasting in shaping public understanding and legitimating austerity through both short and long term patterns of media socialisation.
The twin journals, Der Österreichische Volkswirt (The Austrian Economist) and Der Deutsche Volkswirt (The German Economist) were created by Gustav Stolper, godfather of Joseph Schumpeter, first in Vienna and then after the First World War, in Berlin. Schumpeter was to become a frequent contributor of the Berlin-based journal, which combined a successful blend of economic analysis and political and business insider knowledge which Stolper gained with his famous and sought after parties at his Wannsee villa. The two publications offer a kaleidoscope of many different ideas and concepts, some of which are addressed in this book, including philosophy, demography, monetary aspects, foreign developments, employment policy, and politics. The personal and professional contributions of Gustav Stolper and his secretary, Lilo Linke, are also discussed. Very little has been published on these early ventures into economic journalism, and this book will appeal to anyone studying economic journalism or the economic history of early twentieth century Europe.
In the economic downturn of the early 1970s, the New York Times resurrected an old standby to help halt sliding circulation and ad revenues. The advent of the “Business Day” section was significant not only for the Times, but for other newspapers that followed suit.
The conquest of Americas inaugurated the slow accumulation of resources and the structural transformations that culminated in the industrial revolution. From that moment, capitalism grew and expanded. This work presents the history of capitalism.
This study takes crisis coverage as the dependent variable. Focusing on the Netherlands, we investigate how print media framed the economic crisis (2007–2013) and to what extent temporal and outlet factors account for variation in the use of frames. Relying on an in-depth qualitative content analysis followed up by a quantitative analysis, five major frames are identified that journalists use when discussing the crisis. Our findings, based on variance analyses, show that frame variation is mainly due to temporal factors. While the specific appearance of frames might differ across outlets, we found a remarkable similarity in over-time frame prominence. These results raise doubts about the availability of varied media content to the public in the context of an all-encompassing crisis.
This book explores the relations between objective, media-related, and social attitudinal as well as behavioral realities of private, expert, and corporate agents in the traditions of mass communication, journalism studies and behavioral economics. Results based on time series analyses for German data show that the news reports in a volatile manner on the economy and may influence its development through third-person effects. Bad economic news does not cause a decrease in private purchase intentions. Bad news may lead to a change in corporate decisions, such as advertising expenditures, because corporate decision makers may presume changes in consumer behavior through news.
Long before the invention of printing, let alone the availability of a daily newspaper, people desired to be informed. In the pre-industrial era news was gathered and shared through conversation and gossip, civic ceremony, celebration, sermons, and proclamations. The age of print brought pamphlets, edicts, ballads, journals, and the first news-sheets, expanding the news community from local to worldwide. This groundbreaking book tracks the history of news in ten countries over the course of four centuries. It evaluates the unexpected variety of ways in which information was transmitted in the premodern world as well as the impact of expanding news media on contemporary events and the lives of an ever-more-informed public. Andrew Pettegree investigates who controlled the news and who reported it; the use of news as a tool of political protest and religious reform; issues of privacy and titillation; the persistent need for news to be current and journalists trustworthy; and people's changed sense of themselves as they experienced newly opened windows on the world. By the close of the eighteenth century, Pettegree concludes, transmission of news had become so efficient and widespread that European citizens-now aware of wars, revolutions, crime, disasters, scandals, and other events-were poised to emerge as actors in the great events unfolding around them.
Sylvia Porter (1913-1991) was the nation's first personal finance columnist and one of the most admired women of the twentieth century. In Sylvia Porter: America's Original Personal Finance Columnist, Lucht traces Porter's professional trajectory, identifying her career strategies and exploring the role of gender in her creation of a once-unique, now-ubiquitous form of journalism. A pioneer for both male and female journalists, Porter established a genre of newspaper writing that would last into the twenty-first century while carving a space for women in what had been an almost exclusively male field.
Business Journalism: A Critical Political Economy Approach critically explores the failures of business journalists in striking the balance between the bottom line business model and their role in defending the public interest. Drawing on historical and political economic perspectives and analysing these in relation to critical political economic theory, the book explores failures of business journalism through the dwindling of social responsibility in the business journalist's role in holding political and corporate power to account. Ibrahim Seaga Shaw draws on a diverse range of case studies, including. Investigative journalism in The Standard Oil and Enron Scandals. Corporate propaganda in relation to business reporting. Financial Journalism and the global financial crises of the late-90s and 2008. Public business journalism and subprime mortgage loans, horsemeat and bent iPhone 6 scandals. Ethical challenges of business and journalism from developed to emerging BRICS economies. Business or financial journalism? Modernity vs postmodernity, macroeconomics vs microeconomics. challenges of business journalism in the digital age. Business Journalism: A Critical Political Economy Approach is essential reading for students and scholars interested in understanding the historical failings and potential futures for business journalism and those wishing to develop specialist financial, economic and business reporting in today's globalised media landscape.
"The Commercialization of News in the Nineteenth Century" traces the major transformation of newspapers from a politically based press to a commercially based press in the 19th century. Gerald J. Baldasty argues that broad changes in American society, the national economy and the newspaper industry brought about this dramatic shift. Increasingly in the 19th century, news became a commodity valued more for its profitability than for its role in informing or persuading the public on political issues. Newspapers started out as highly partisan adjuncts of political parties. As advertisers replaced political parties as the chief financial support of the press, they influenced newspapers in directing their content toward consumers, especially women. The results were recipes, fiction, contests and features on everything from sports to fashion alongside more standard news about politics. Baldasty makes use of 19th century materials - newspapers from throughout the era, manuscript letters from journalists and politicians, journalism and advertising trade publications, government reports - to document the changing role of the press during the period. He identifies three important phases: the partisan newpapers of the Jacksonian era (1825-1835), the transition of the press in the middle of the century, and the influence of commercialisation of the news in the last two decades of the century.
Many commentators believe that the business press “missed” the story of the twenty-first century—the 2008 economic crisis. Condemned for being too close to the firms they were supposed to be holding to account, journalists failed in their duties to the public. Recent historical studies of business journalism present a similarly pessimistic picture. By contrast, this article stresses the importance of the press as a key intermediary of reputation in the nineteenth-century marketplace. In England, reporters played an instrumental role in opening up companies' general meetings to the public gaze and in warning investors of fraudulent businesses. This regulation by reputation was at least as important as company law in making the City of London a relatively safe place to do business by the start of the twentieth century.
The market economy and the market for information developed in tandem in the nineteenth century but their relationship is imperfectly understood. This article explores the characteristics and role of early financial journalism through a case study of a major insurance company scandal in the eighteen‐forties. Press reports both before and after the company's collapse show that newspapers played a more active role in exposing and reporting fraud than has been argued. The case had important ramifications both for company law and for the future development of financial journalism, with willingness to expose fraud becoming central to financial journalists’ claims to legitimacy.
This study considers the emergence of personal finance magazines in the US after the Second World War. It examines an instance when a possible relationship existed between a media genre’s emergence and shifts in the general political economy. It suggests that the appearance of the personal finance genre was related to the shift in the American political economy from corporate liberalism to neoliberalism. Specifically, it focuses on the hailing patterns evident in personal finance magazines’ editorial statements, and finds that these patterns attempt to constitute a popular and heterogeneous investing public of independent individuals in which magazines supplant other agents as sources of advice.
The collapse of Enron and other corporate scandals have raised concerns about the efficacy of financial journalism. Based on research on where reporters get their ideas for stories and how they approach their work, this article explores the particular circumstances in which production of financial and economic news takes place. The author argues that, while reporters are generally highly sceptical about ‘spin’ and strongly inclined towards highlighting instances of corporate underperformance and mismanagement, the circumstances and constraints they work within nonetheless make it unlikely that financial irregularities obscured within company accounts will be detected on a routine or consistent basis. Moreover, the way in which the commercial sector is organized (with in-depth analysis generally confined to specialist media whose audiences are already financially literate) means that the task of facilitating a sound public grasp over the significance of financial and economic news developments is largely being neglected.
Modern business newspapers provide their readers with the latest market prices. Yet few of their readers would suspect that this kind of reporting already existed in Italy in the fourteenth century. By the end of the sixteenth century different types of market information were published regularly at the important trade centres of Europe in different kinds of business newspapers: commodity price currents, foreign exchange rate currents, and money currents. Merchants bought these newspapers and sent them to their correspondents all over Europe and beyond. This shows how much importance businessmen attached to having the most recent, reliable information. This book begins with the identification of materials that have been virtually unknown until now. The authors describe the earliest known commodity price currents, foreign exchange rate currents, and money currents during the period from 1540 to 1775.
