Partnering with Educators
Evolution of Business Journalism Education
Chris Roush is the Walter E. Hussman
Sr. distinguished professor at the
University of North Carolina–Chapel
Hill School of Media and Journalism.
He served as the school’s senior
associate dean from 2011 to 2015
and as the director of its master’s
program from 2007 to 2010. He is the
founder of the Carolina Business News
Initiative, which provides professional
training in business journalism, and
he created the school’s undergraduate
major in business journalism. He
is the author or coauthor of nine
books—five corporate histories and
four books about business journalism.
His textbook Show Me the Money:
Writing Business and Economics Stories
for Mass Communication is in its third
edition and is the leading textbook in
business journalism education. He also
has founded and run various websites,
including Talking Biz News, a website
about business journalism. In 2010,
he was named Journalism Teacher
of the Year by the Scripps Howard
Foundation and the Association for
Education in Journalism and Mass
Communication.
© Business Expert Press 978-1-94858-042-7 (2018)
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and the Role of Foundations, Corporations,
and Corporate Executives
Chris Roush
Abstract: Business journalism education is a small
field in American academia, but one that has taken
hold at some of its best journalism programs.
A ­historical ­review shows that two types of business
journalism academic programs have emerged over
the past 50  years—one that serves experienced jour-
nalists and o­ ffers a ­master’s ­degree, and the other that
primarily trains u ­ ndergraduate journalism students.
Both types of curricula have had moderate success in
attracting ­interest from f­oundations, businesses, and
executives in ­involving them in improving the quality
of b
­ usiness journalism, but those efforts have been
inconsistent. As the demand for j­ournalists who can
write about business and the economy i­ ntensifies due
to changes in society, this history shows that jour-
nalism programs should look to corporations and
­executives, who have a vested ­interest in the qual-
ity of business journalism, for s­ upport and g­ uidance
on how these programs can be created, and how they
­expand and proliferate.
Keywords: business, economics, education, journalism,
professionalization
Introduction
Business journalism is a relatively new field of study in
American higher education, but its importance to the
public at large, to the corporate world, and to the field
of journalism is growing. As a former business reporter
and the director of a business journalism program,
I ­propose that leaders in business journalism education
partner with the business community to develop and
fund more robust business journalism curricula because
of the growth in the professional business journalism
world. This article will trace the history of business jour-
nalism education—including the role that corporations
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 Partnering with Educators
and business leaders played in launch-
ing and supporting ­several of the earliest
programs—and d ­iscuss the opportunities
and challenges that arise from a partner-
ship of corporate interests and journalism
education.
Today, only about a dozen colleges and
universities offer either an ­undergraduate
or master’s degree in business journalism
despite the growth in the professional
field and the demand for journalists who
­understand how to write about business
and the economy. While many ­journalism
and mass communication e ­ ducational
­programs offer a business r­ eporting class,
if they have a faculty member with the
expertise to teach the course, e ­ nrollment
growth, if any, at mass communication
programs in the past 20 years, has come
from ­public r­ elations, a ­ dvertising, and
­integrated ­marketing curricula. In ­addition,
in recent years, journalism p ­ rograms have
added more curricula in health care and
sports journalism than in business and
economics.
The lack of business journalism education
programs exists despite the long-standing
­recognition of the important role that
­business and economics news plays in
­American society. A study by the St. Louis
Federal ­Reserve Bank shows that consum-
ers invest in the stock market—which has
produced a higher return than Treasury
bills on ­average ­between 1928 and 2016—
more in states where the average e­ ducation
level is higher (Chen and Morris 2017). In
1945, Julian ­Elfenbein, chairman of the
­editorial ­committee of Haire P ­ ublishing
Company and a New York University
­lecturer, wrote about how businesses relied
on business news ­publications to educate
their employees:
As they enter the various fields
of ­business, the college graduates
­become the responsibility of the busi-
ness press. Some corporations send
­college ­graduates who have joined their
staffs back to college for postgraduate
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training; some give on-the-job train-
ing; but the great majority of corporate
businesses provide their executive
­personnel and the assistants with the
business papers specializing in their
fields of a­ ctivity and hope for the best
(­Elfenbein 1945, p. 266).
The move to professionalization in the
early twentieth century among lawyers,
­doctors, and in other business-related profes-
sions coincided with the desire for journalism
to become a profession, writes journalism
historian Jean Folkerts (2014). Elfenbein
added that “no force has striven harder than
business journalism to make business a
­profession (Elfenbein 1945, p. 287).”
However, this article shows that the
business world has made few attempts
­
to i­ nteract with, or support, business
­journalism education, despite the fact that
businesses benefit from h
­ ­igher-quality
business and economics news and
information. Business historian Alfred
­
Chandler and James Cortada argue in
­
A  Nation Transformed by Information that
information about business has been a
­
building block in developing society and
the economy since the 1600s (Chandler
and Cortada 2000). More recently, ­Nicholas
Guest (2017) at Massachusetts Institute of
Technology found that Wall Street Journal
articles with analysis of a company’s finan-
cial performance ­increased trading volume
in its stock and improved “price discov-
ery.” N­ icholas Ahern of the University of
­Southern ­California and Denis Sosyura of
the University of Michigan found that the
quality of financial media stories improved
with a journalist’s experience, specialized
education, and industry expertise, and
that the ­quality of sources—from within
the b
­ usiness world—for ­reporters ­covering
mergers and acquisitions ­ improves the
quality of their articles (Ahern and S­ osyura
2015). W ­riting in ­ Journal of Economic
Behavior and Organization, Tomasz Piotr
­
Wisniewski and ­ Brendan Lambe of the
University of ­
­ Leicester ­ discovered that
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 Partnering with Educators
business journalists also help investors
outperform the market. They found that
journalists “not only r­ eport on the state of
economic reality, but also play an active role
in ­creating it. I­nvestors acting upon senti-
ment in media reports would have been able
to improve their i­nvestment p ­ erformance
(­Wisniewski and Lambe  2013).”
The business community, overall, histori-
cally has played a negative role in business
news, putting pressure on publications to
ignore a story that might place them in a
negative light with society despite the ar-
ticle’s contribution to a better understand-
ing of how that business works, discovered
Maha Rafi Atal (2017) of the University of
Cambridge. Many companies and executives
view the business journalism field as an
enemy rather than as a way to help society
understand their impact. A 1994 report by
the Freedom Forum Center, written by Mike
Haggerty and Wallace Rasmussen, concluded:
Executives perceive media ­people
as liberal, adversarial, ­well-educated
do-gooders—mal-informed and
­misinformed about business—who
operate with little or no s­ upervision.
In their view, reporters come into
interviews unprepared, ask a­ rrogant
and unfair questions, and see only
one side of an issue, the side that is
inevitably anti-business (Haggerty
and Rasmussen 1994).
This article examines how business
j­ournalism programs have developed at
some of the country’s leading journalism
schools and how the business community—­
corporations, executives, and foundations—has
been i­nvolved, or not involved, in creating
those endeavors. It will also examine the
complex—and often ­conflicted—­relationship
between businesses, executives, and founda-
tions, and business journalism, as a reason
why the business community has, for the
most part, remained at an arm’s length when
it comes to business journalism education.
This a­ rticle concludes that corporations
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should not fear funding business journalism
programs because it benefits them in the long
run by providing better-educated consumers
who read i­ mproved business news coverage.
Journalism Education and Business
The first journalism classes at A ­ merican
colleges and universities began in the
1860s at places such as Cornell ­University
and ­ Washington College, now known as
­Washington and Lee University. ­Washington
president Robert E. Lee, the former head of
the Confederate Army, viewed journalism
as a way to improve the South’s regional
newspapers and r­ ebuild its economy,
writes Jean ­Folkerts (2014). By the end of
the ­nineteenth century, ­journalism courses
were being offered at public ­universities in
Pennsylvania, ­Kansas, and Missouri, and in
1908 the ­University of ­Missouri c­ reated the
first academic unit with a degree in jour-
nalism. It opened on July 1, 1908, and the
founder, Walter ­Williams, “borrowed what
made sense from professional schools in
other fields,” wrote Steve W ­ einberg (2008,
p. 14). That meant c­ombining classroom
instruction with a laboratory ­ setting of
real-world application. Soon after it started,
the ­ Missouri journalism p ­rogram began
­requiring five credits of economics, showing
that Williams wanted the ­students to have
a basic u ­ nderstanding of how e ­conomies
worked. The first edition of the ­newspaper
University Missourian, p ­roduced by its
­students, on September 14, 1908, i­ncluded
a business news story: “The ­closure of the
Columbia Theater because of legal and
­financial trouble (Weinberg 2008, p.17).”
Shortly thereafter, Columbia University
became the first private American univer-
sity with a journalism program. Newspaper
owner Joseph Pulitzer gave the university
$2  million in 1902 to create a journalism
school, which opened in September 1912,
one year after Pulitzer’s death. Despite
the fact that some of the biggest pieces
of muckraking journalism in the previ-
ous ­ decade—Ida Tarbell’s writing about
the Standard Oil Co. and Upton Sinclair’s
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 Partnering with Educators
­ xpose of the meatpacking industry, among
e crash. The New York F
others—focused on the monopolistic prac-
tices of businesses and executives, no early
journalism program sought to teach its
­students how to properly cover businesses
and the economy. Multiple journalism
education histories, particularly Folkerts,
make no mention of business journalism.
Columbia’s early students, for example,
wrote about a sensational murder trial and
President Taft’s unsuccessful reelection
campaign. One student spent time as an
undercover waiter in a downtown cocaine
den (Boylan 2003).
At the same time that journalism educa-
tion was expanding in the United States,
business journalism was becoming its own
specialized field. While The Wall Street
­Journal started in 1889, the early ­twentieth
century saw business p ­ ublications m ­ ultiply.
Financial World started in 1902 and would
last until the 1990s. Forbes ­magazine
started in 1917, and it was f­ollowed by
­Business Week magazine in 1929 and F ­ ortune
­magazine in 1930. In 1920, John J.  Leary
Jr. of New York World won a P ­ ulitzer Prize
for his c­overage of a coal strike a year
earlier. It was the first Pulitzer won by a
­reporter covering a business or economic
issue. Q­uality business and economics
news, however, fell short in most publica-
tions. “The big city press does not supply
its male readers with what they want in the
way of business and ­financial news  .  .  .,”
wrote ­financial j­ournalist H
­ oward Carswell
in Public O
­ pinion Quarterly in 1938. “Cover-
age should envisage the whole p ­ anorama
of business, ­ industry and fi ­nance—of
technology and r­esearch; ­
­ promotion and
advertising; retail, ­wholesale, and foreign
trade; problems of management and com-
petition” (Carswell 1938). The Wall Street
Journal had been e ­mbarrassed to report
after the October 1929 stock market crash
that some of its ­ reporters had accepted
money from investors to promote specific
stocks in the paper.
Business journalists began to professional-
ize themselves in the aftermath of the market
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­ inancial Writers’
Association formed in 1938 and continues
to operate today. Business ­executives also
were involved in the e ­ ffort. Gerald Loeb, a
founding partner of E. F. Hutton, founded
The Gerald Loeb Awards, now located at the
UCLA Anderson School of Management, in
1957. He intended to encourage reporting on
business and ­finance that would inform and
protect the private investor and the general
­public. In late 1963, the Society of American
­Business Writers, later called the Society of
­American Business Editors and Writers, was
formed. It was the first nationwide profes-
sional ­organization of business journalists,
and it would later write the first code of
ethics for business journalism.
The following discusses the formation of
some of the country’s business journalism
programs to provide context as to how the
relationship between its teaching in higher
education and corporations and execu-
tives has evolved. A review of this history
shows that, for the most part, companies,
executives, and foundations can actually
­
help grow business journalism education
and practice.
Missouri and Corporate Funding
The first business journalism program at
an American university was created with
funding from an industry organization
and required students to take a m ­ ixture
of business and journalism classes. It
later received funding from multiple large
­corporations to develop training for jour-
nalists who had already entered business
journalism.
The University of Missouri (1964) ­received
$30,000 in September 1964 to e ­ stablish a
curriculum “linking business and the press
and establishing cash awards for business
and financial news reporting.” The money
came from George P. Garver, president of
the Independent Natural Gas Association
of America, and established a professor-
ship in business communications. Michael
Corcoran, formerly at the University of
­Minnesota, was hired as an associate professor
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of journalism and business management
and was given the task of developing a
curriculum ­offered jointly by the School
of Journalism and the School of Business
and Public A ­ dministration. Dean Earl F.
English of the School of Journalism said
the program “will stimulate young people
towards careers in the field of ­business
­writing (University of Missouri 1964b).”
The curriculum, an undergraduate pro-
gram, required students to complete at least
30 hours in the Journalism School, including
classes called “Business C ­ ommunications
and Financial Journalism” and “Business
and Company Publications (­University of
Missouri n.d).” In ­ addition, the students
were required to c­ omplete 18 hours in the
School of Business, i­ncluding “Corporate
Finance” and “Money and Banking.” Sug-
gested elective classes ­ included “Labor
Problems,” “International Economics,” and
“The Banking System and Money Market.”
A memo to Missouri journalism dean
Roy  M. Fisher in August 1971 proposed
changes to the business journalism
­curriculum. It noted:
The field of preparing a neophyte
newsman to handle basic business and
financial news is virtually u ­ nplowed
ground. But I think that through a
combination of carefully selected
courses from the over-all university
curriculum, plus one or two courses
taught by the journalism faculty, com-
petent reporters in this field could be
developed. I make these recommenda-
tions not in the hope that journalism
schools will become farm teams of the
Wall Street Journal or financial sections
such as ours at The Daily News, but in
the belief that better, more informed
coverage of economic problems is
a pressing need on all newspapers
(­University of Missouri 1971).
The memo argued that no journalism
school courses be offered on how to write
a financial news story. Instead, business
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journalism students would take classes on
topics such as the economic history of the
United States, public policy applications
of economic theory, and state and ­ local
government finance. In the journalism
­
school, it was proposed that a o
­ ne-semester
course be designed that taught topics
such as sources of business and econom-
ics data and the stock market, and that
students read The Wall Street Journal daily
(­University of Missouri 1971, p. 2).
In 1975, the Journalism School expanded
its business journalism educational efforts
after it received a $25,000 grant from the
Smith Richardson Foundation, which is
based in Greensboro, North Carolina, and
has a  mission to contribute to important
public debates and to address serious public
policy challenges facing the United State,
to fund a four-week business journalism
program for mid-career ­
­ journalists. The
program, called the Davenport Fellowships,
was named after Herbert J. ­Davenport, the
first dean of the Business School at Missouri
and a noted economist. Other d ­ onors to the
program included large corporations such
as Ford Motor Company, R.J. R ­eynolds
Industries, Exxon, Mobil, Dow Chemical,
Sears Roebuck, and Chase Manhattan Bank
(Weinberg 2008, p. 185). The donors did
not become involved in how the journal-
ists were educated. “Ford became a great
funder and never put any demands on us,”
said program director James Gentry. “None
of the funders never did anything except
give us a check and say, ‘Keep up the good
work’” (Gentry, March 2, 2018, telephone
interview).
The students took classes in economics,
accounting, finance, and current b ­ usiness
issues, and the class size was typically
20 reporters and editors each year. In 1992,
when Gentry moved to the University of
Nevada-Reno to become dean, the program
moved with him, but the Davenport name
was dropped.
Currently, the Journalism School offers
two courses in business journalism—“The
Art and Mechanics of the Business Story”
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 Partnering with Educators
and “Business and Economics Reporting.”
In the first class, students write for Missouri
Business Alert, a website covering busi-
ness and economics news around the state
run by Randall Smith, the former business
­editor of the Kansas City Star. The Missouri
program has been an example of how busi-
ness journalism education can collaborate
and thrive with corporate funding.
Columbia and Conflict
Businessweek journalists Soma Golden and
Steve Shepard began teaching a seminar
in business and economics reporting at
the Columbia University Graduate School
of Journalism in 1971. In the first class,
during the spring 1971 semester, seven
students enrolled (Shepard 2013, p. 59).
­ program following a major gift from the
But after the Arab oil embargo, the near
bankruptcy of the city of New York, and a
recession, i­nterest in business journalism
rose, the enrollment rose to 15 students
and then to 22 students. By 1974, Dean Elie
Abel proposed creating a program similar
to the Nieman Foundation for Journalism
program at Harvard University, where jour-
nalists took a year off from work to study.
The Columbia version would specialize in
reporters and editors who were in business
journalism.
Shepard took a one-year leave from Busi-
nessweek to start the program, named after
former Economist editor Walter ­Bagehot. To
fund the Bagehot Fellowship in E ­ conomics
and Business Journalism, ­foundations and
corporations such as ­Alcoa Foundation, AT&T
Foundation, Exxon ­Educational Foundation,
IBM Corporation, and ­Prudential Insurance
gave money. “All had a strong interest in
improving the quality of business reporting,
and all were willing to leave control of the
program with C ­ olumbia,” wrote Shepard
(2013, p. 60). Guest speakers in the first year
included IBM CEO Frank Cary and Paul Vol-
cker, later chair of the Federal ­Reserve Board.
Shepard left after a year for a job at News-
week, and Golden, retired national e ­ ditor and
assistant managing editor at The New  York
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Times, took over running the p ­ rogram. She
was followed by business journalist Chris
Welles, whose appointment as director of the
Bagehot program ­resulted in ­Mobil Oil with-
drawing its ­annual ­contribution of $50,000
because it did not like a­ rticles he had writ-
ten that were critical of the industry. That
caused the program to cut its f­ellows from
10 to 6 until more donors were found, expos-
ing the conflict in b­ usinesses funding busi-
ness ­ journalism education (Shepard 2013,
p. 63). This, however, is the only recorded
­instance in which a corporation expressed an
issue with how a business journalism educa-
tional program operated.
Welles ran the program for 7 years. In
1987, it was renamed the Knight–Bagehot
John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
In 1991, program director Pamela Hollie
Kluge produced the “Guide to Economics
and Business Journalism,” the first busi-
ness journalism textbook. Kluge wrote,
The Guide does not attempt to answer
every question about economics and
business. The goal of the contribu-
tors is simple: to demystify business
and economics and help journalists
overcome the anxiety associated with
facing a business subject for the first
time (Kluge 1991, p. xi).
A second edition was published in 2000.
The program requires the students to com-
plete at least 30 hours during two ­semesters,
with the most common courses chosen
being subjects such as macroeconomics,
accounting, corporate finance, business
­
law, international economics, and securities
analysis. The program also still includes a
seminar in business and economics report-
ing, currently taught by former New York
Times business reporter Leslie Wayne. The
students also meet regularly with c­ orporate
executives over dinner. Past guests have
­included Warren Buffett, Lloyd Blankfein,
Jamie Dimon, and Sallie Krawcheck.
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In addition to the mid-career business
journalism program, Columbia has also
been offering a regular graduate business
journalism program for students. In recent
years, a New York Times business colum-
nist has been one of the professors.
Northwestern and No Corporate
Funding
Another private university, ­Northwestern
­University, also started offering a b ­ usiness
journalism program in the 1970s. It was first
run by former ­Fortune reporter ­Elizabeth
­Yamashita until 1980, and then ­expanded
by former ­Chicago Daily News and Chicago
Sun-Times fi ­ nancial e ­ ditor George H­ armon,
(­Harmon, March 2, 2018, telephone ­interview)
who had earned an MBA from Loyola Uni-
versity in C ­ hicago in 1976. The business
journalism ­students took two courses—
“Reporting on ­Public A ­ ffairs: Economics
and Business” and an ­economics ­seminar—
at the ­Medill School of J­ ournalism. They
would also cover business s­ tories for M ­ edill’s
­Chicago ­newsroom and send those stories to
daily suburban newspapers in places such
as A ­ urora, J­ oliet, and W­ aukegan. “They all
had business s­ ections but not many b ­ usiness
­reporters,” said ­Harmon. “So we would feed a
lot of copy out to them. [The students] would
­report ­local earnings, ­executive changes and
mergers (Harmon 2018).”
The program, which initially had 40 to
50 master’s students each year, expanded
to 80 to 90 students in the 1980s, said
­Harmon. Few had any journalism experi-
ence, and many of them came from liberal
arts programs. He also brought prominent
business journalists and ­executives into the
classes as guest speakers, and the ­students
visited the Chicago Board of Trade and the
Federal Reserve Bank in Chicago. However,
it has never received any large grants or
funding from foundations or corporations,
said Harmon, because Northwestern had
funding from other recourses.
The current business journalism course
offerings at Northwestern are “Business
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Specialization Seminar” and “Advanced Busi-
ness Reporting.” The program has r­ ecently
­expanded to provide an option for students
wanting to go into technology reporting with
a Medill newsroom in San Francisco run in
conjunction with Northwestern’s computer
science department.
Harmon is a believer in business jour-
nalism curricula that includes ­economics
and business courses. “I did poorly in
­economics and accounting in college,” said
Harmon.
I think it’s really difficult when you’re
in college unless you have a focus
on wanting to understand business
journalism. The people would come
out of college and just wouldn’t know
how a business worked. I related to
this. I didn’t either (Harmon 2018).
Northwestern has shown that business
journalism educational efforts can be
successful without the help of corporate
funding, but with the help of corporate
involvement.
Despite the efforts of Missouri, C­ olumbia,
and Northwestern, business journalism
quality was still roundly criticized. The
1987 “Study of Economic and Business
Journalism for the Ford ­Foundation” by the
Foundation for American ­Communications
found that the “public’s need for i­ nformed
coverage of the e­ conomic ­matters that now
dominate civic and political affairs remains
measurably and markedly u ­ nfilled.” It found
the problem “particularly ­pronounced in
broadcast news.” The study said an impe-
tus for improving e ­ conomics and business
coverage in mass communication would
have to come from “journalism schools’
commitment to structure curriculums so
as to provide education in analytic founda-
tions in substantive fields of specialization
(Foundation for American Communications
1987).” The report recommended double
majors in business and economics as well
as specific courses.
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 Partnering with Educators
New York University and Foundation
Funding
New York University’s business ­journalism
program for master’s students began in 1999
and was part of a trend at the ­university to
create journalism curriculum based on a sub-
ject matter rather than a d­ elivery mode such
as newspaper, magazine, or ­television. Other
master’s ­programs ­developed at that time
include one in s­cience and e ­ nvironmental
reporting, and one in ­ cultural reporting
and criticism. Each ­admits ­between 10 and
15 students a year.
The business journalism program’s devel-
opment was influenced by the ­experience of
Steve Solomon, the program’s first director.
After graduating from Pennsylvania State
University, he had earned a law degree from
Georgetown University with the belief that
training would prepare him to write about law,
government, and business. When Solomon
developed the 44-hour credit curriculum for
the program, he ­included courses in business
writing as well as courses from the MBA
program at the University’s Stern School of
Business. Students take six courses at NYU’s
Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute and six
courses at Stern, including microeconomics,
macroeconomics, finance, and accounting
(Solomon 2018).
New York University’s program also
­requires a full-time summer internship
between the second and third semesters.
In 2013, the business journalism program
received support from the Marjorie Deane
Financial Journalism Foundation. Deane
was a journalist for The Economist from
1947 to 1989. That funding allows New York
University to take its business j­ournalism
students to London every May to study
business and economics issues in Europe
such as Brexit. It also now holds an ­annual
Marjorie Deane Lecture that brings a
noted economist to speak on campus. Past
­speakers have included Alan Blinder and
Robert Shiller.
The New York University program also now
has a relationship with the fi ­ nancial news
service Reuters and the National ­Association
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of Black Journalists (NABJ) to provide f­ unding
for NABJ members ­interested in ­becoming
business j­ ournalists. The relationship ­between
New York U ­ niversity and financial news
­organizations shows another potential model
that can be developed successfully. But those
also could present problems if those media
companies want a say in how the students
are taught.
Washington & Lee University
and Foundation Funding
Based in Lexington, Virginia, ­Washington &
Lee University created an undergradu-
ate business journalism program in the
early twenty-first century after receiving
a $1.5  million grant from the Las Vegas-
based Donald W. Reynolds Foundation,
which a­ llowed the journalism program to
create an endowed chair in business jour-
nalism. The foundation was named after
the creator of Donrey Media, and when it
was sold to Stephens Media Group, most of
the proceeds went to the foundation. The
first person to hold the chair was Pamela
Luecke, who had been a business journalist
at The Hartford Courant and The Louisville
Courier-Journal. In spring 2002, she taught
a course called “Lessons from Enron.” The
syllabus stated:
The collapse of Enron offers a rare
opportunity to look at a business
scandal real-time. We will do this
with an interdisciplinary approach,
hoping to come to a greater under-
standing of the complex story by
­viewing it from several different
­angles. B
­ ecause the course is pri-
marily a journalism course, though,
we will return ­repeatedly to issues
of how the press is handling the
story—and students will write regu-
lar commentaries about the i­ssues
we discuss (Luecke 2002).
The curriculum created at ­Washington &
Lee required students to take classes at
its School of Commerce, Economics and
Expert Insights
 Partnering with Educators
Politics and its Journalism and Mass Com-
munication Department. The journalism
curriculum includes classes on business
­reporting and economics reporting while
the business classes include “Introduc-
tion to Economics” and “Introduction to
Accounting.” Four additional upper-level
classes are required in accounting, ­business
administration, or economics, including at
least one with an international focus.
Students must also complete an intern-
ship of at least 200 hours. In 2004 and
again in 2007, the Reynolds Foundation
­augmented its original grant with three-year
$450,000 awards to fund business journal-
ism internships. (Recent locations include
CNBC, American City Business Journals,
The Charlotte Observer and The Richmond
Times-Dispatch.) In 2010, the foundation
gave the program an additional five-year
$1.5 million grant. The ­Washington & Lee
program, now run by former business jour-
nalist Alecia Swasy, has been successful at
placing its recent graduates at places such
as Bloomberg News, The Wall Street Journal,
and CNBC.
Arizona State University
and Reynolds
The Reynolds Foundation has also been
­integral to another business journalism pro-
gram. In 2006, it gave $3.5 million to move
the Donald W. Reynolds National Center
for Business Journalism, which b ­egan of-
fering business journalism ­ workshops
across the country in 2003, from the Amer-
ican Press Institute to Arizona State Uni-
versity. In 2008, the Reynolds Foundation
gave a­nother $5.34  million to Arizona
State’s W­ alter Cronkite School of Journal-
ism and Mass Communication to create
an endowed chair in business journalism
(Arizona State U ­ niversity 2008). Andrew
Leckey, a former CNBC anchor and Chicago
Tribune syndicated business columnist, was
named the first chair. At the same time, the
­Reynolds Foundation also gave money to the
­University of M
­ issouri and the University of
Nevada-Reno for business journalism chairs.
© Business Expert Press 978-1-94858-042-7 (2018)
www.businessexpertpress.com
The Foundation has looked to e­ xpand busi-
ness journalism education in other ways. In
January 2011, it awarded a five-year grant to
the Cronkite School to ­establish and admin-
ister a visiting ­business ­journalism professor
program. ­Colorado State U­ niversity, Grambling
State ­University, Texas Christian University,
and the University of South Carolina hosted
the ­inaugural visiting professors during the
spring 2012 semester. Central Michigan, Elon,
and Louisiana State universities hosted pro-
fessors in spring 2013. However, only one of
these universities—South C ­ arolina—has gone
on to fund a permanent business journalism
professor position.
In September 2012, the Reynolds Founda-
tion gave Arizona State another $8.2 million
for business journalism ­education, includ-
ing funding the creation of a visiting busi-
ness journalism professor at the Cronkite
School (Arizona State ­University 2012). The
business journalism curriculum at Arizona
State includes an undergraduate specializa-
tion and an online business program. In
the undergraduate curriculum, students
take courses such as “Issues in Coverage of
Business and the Economy” and “Reporting
on Business and the Economy” as well as
four courses at the W. P. Carey School of
Business. The online Master of Science in
Business Journalism also targets “profes-
sionals in public relations, education or
other public or private environments in
which an understanding of business and
economics and how to effectively commu-
nicate on those topics, is essential (Arizona
State University 2018).” Its classes include
“Better Business Reporting” and “Data in
Business Journalism” as well as business
school classes.
Arizona State also created a business jour-
nalism bureau in 2014 through a $1 million
grant from the Reynolds Foundation. The
content produced by the s­tudents work-
ing in the bureau is distributed through
the Cronkite News Service (Overholt
2014). Both Washington & Lee and Arizona
State show that business journalism pro-
grams can be built at either small or large
Expert Insights
9
 Partnering with Educators
journalism programs with the help of foun-
dation backing, which is often influenced
by the corporations that have put money
into the foundation.
University of North Carolina
and No Funding
The University of North Carolina (UNC)
began offering a regular undergraduate
­ UNC’s business journalism program also
class called “Business Reporting” in the
Spring 2003 semester and a class called
“Economics Reporting” in Fall 2003. It
added a seminar class “Business and the
Media” in Spring 2005. While the first two
courses teach skills, the third is a seminar
that discusses the relationship ­between the
business world and the media world and
includes topics such as the i­nfluence of
­advertising and public relations on ­business
news stories. The “Business ­ Reporting”
class has regularly included a visit from a
chief executive officer of a publicly traded
company who has given a presentation
similar to one given to analysts and inves-
tors and then answered questions from the
students.
In the first few years of these classes, the
business journalism education effort at UNC
included a trip to New York for ­students
interested in visiting business m
­ edia outlets
such as BusinessWeek, Bloomberg News, and
The Wall Street ­Journal, as well as viewing
the New York Stock Exchange trading floor.
It also ­participated in a mock news confer-
ence competition, first against students at
the University of Virginia’s ­McIntire School
of Commerce and then against UNC busi-
ness school students.
These three courses comprised a certifi-
cate program for students in the School of
Journalism and Mass Communication. The
certificate program expanded into a joint
major with the Kenan-Flagler Business
School in 2011, and that major has admit-
ted between 11 and 17 students annually
each year since then. The business school
classes required for the major are similar
to those at the other business journalism
programs and include accounting, business
10 © Business Expert Press 978-1-94858-042-7 (2018)
www.businessexpertpress.com
law, and management. The d ­ irector of the
program has written what is now considered
the leading business journalism textbook
“Show Me the Money: Writing Business and
Economics Stories for Mass Communica-
tion,” and a history of business journalism
called “Profits and Losses: B ­ usiness Jour-
nalism and Its Role in Society.”
expanded to offer an “Advanced Business
Reporting” course for four years. For the
first three years, that course was taught by
reporters and editors from Bloomberg News.
In the last year, it was taught by reporters
and editors from The Wall Street Journal.
That course was then replaced by “­Business
News Wire,” where students produce
­business news stories that are d ­ istributed
to North Carolina media ­organizations. The
program’s graduates now work on busi-
ness news desks at The New York Times,
­Philadelphia Inquirer, Cleveland Plain-Dealer,
and at The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg
News, and CNBC.
This program has had no funding from
businesses, executives, or foundations.
Smaller Efforts
Many other colleges and universities across
the country offer business ­journalism courses
and programs. B ­ loomberg News funded
chairs in graduate-level business journalism
at the University of California-Berkeley and
Baruch College in New York and has been a
supporter of ­business journalism programs at
other ­universities by sending its executives
to speak. At Southern M ­ ethodist University,
­Investor’s Business Daily founder William
O’Neal has funded a chair in b ­ usiness jour-
nalism. Former Dow Jones and Wall Street
Journal ­reporter Rob Wells now teaches a
business journalism course at the ­University
of ­Arkansas. At the University of ­Nebraska,
graduate students and mid-career pro-
fessionals will be able to earn a financial
­communications certificate starting in fall
2018, with two of the courses from the jour-
nalism school and two from the College of
Business Administration. Nebraska has been
Expert Insights
 Partnering with Educators
o­ ffering a business journalism course since fall
2010. Shepard, who helped start the business
journalism program at Columbia, founded
the City University of New York Graduate
School of Journalism in 2006, which offers
a specialization in b ­ usiness journalism. It
is run by Greg David, the former editor of
Crain’s New York Business.
Despite these efforts, business journalism
is not a widespread area for study, either at
the undergraduate or graduate level in jour-
nalism schools. There are ­ approximately
120 accredited journalism programs in the
United States, and those mentioned above
are the major players in business journal-
ism. Other accredited journalism programs
only offer courses and curriculum when
they have a faculty member with the skills
and experience to teach such a course, and
even then sometimes fail to fill the classes
because uninformed journalism students
fear using numbers in stories and think
writing about ­ business is boring. This is
­despite a study from M ­ ichael Ludwig (2002)
that found that journalists at the begin-
ning of the twenty-first c­entury believed
that all journalists should receive training
on covering business and the economy. In
2012, Mary Jane Pardue (2014) at Missouri
State University found that 57 p ­ ercent of
U.S. business editors feel graduating jour-
nalism students are either “moderately
unprepared” or “extremely ­
­ unprepared.”
That level is better than the 80.5 percent
who gave the same grade a d ­ ecade earlier in
a similar Pardue study, but still a majority.
Joseph Weber of the University of
Nebraska noted that many business and
­ that executives gave their local daily news-
economics journalism instructors avoid
­using terms such as “business” or “econom-
ics” in their course titles. He wrote:
Finding ways to make corporate
­financial reports or economic
­analyses compelling, frankly, can
be ­daunting, especially when one
deals with u ­ ndergraduates who
bring ­little or no background in such
areas. Journalists who have been
© Business Expert Press 978-1-94858-042-7 (2018)
www.businessexpertpress.com
immersed in such a ­ reas for years
know how ­intriguing and useful
such reports and analyses can be,
in fact, but conveying that knowl-
edge in an engaging way demands
particular techniques that motivate
and involve students (­Weber 2016).
Corporate Opinion of Business
Journalism
Business executives, for the most part, hold
a low opinion about business and ­economics
reporting. A 1991 poll ­conducted by Louis
Harris and Associates found that slightly
more than half of executives have a positive
view of business journalism in America,
and only 27 percent believed that business
journalism was fair, balanced, and accurate
(Louis Harris Poll 1991). In ­ comparison,
64  percent of ­ business school professors
and deans believed that business journal-
ism was fair, balanced, and a­ ccurate. A 1994
study by the Freedom F ­ orum First Amend-
ment Center at Vanderbilt ­University found
that 68 percent of e ­xecutives believed
that the news media are biased against
­management, and about half of the execu-
tives s­ urveyed believed that they were not
quoted accurately. Nearly three-fourths
believed that j­ournalists portrayed busi-
­
nesses in a negative light (­ Haggerty and
Rasmussen 1994, p. 4).
The perceptions of business j­ournalism
in corporate boardrooms have not i­ mproved
since then. A Selzer & Co. survey for the
American Press Institute in 2003 found
papers low marks for content and cred-
ibility. One in three was dissatisfied with
the quality of business news in their local
newspaper, and more than 60 percent gave
reporters low marks for being able to ask
intelligent questions about their businesses
(Seltzer & Co. poll 2003).
The relationship between business jour-
nalism and the executives and the ­companies
they cover has been widely studied in busi-
ness-related academic journals, particularly
Expert Insights
11
 Partnering with Educators
on how business news stories may influence
stock prices. J. Felix Meschke of Arizona
State University examined how the market
reacted when a chief executive officer was
interviewed on financial news network
CNBC and found an abnormally high return
in the CEO’s company stock price before the
interview and after it ended (Meschke 2004).
­Alexander Dyck of Harvard Business School
and Luigi Zingales of the University of
­Chicago found that stock prices react more
strongly when a company reports ­earnings
when the media outlet reporting on its
­financial performance is more credible than
other media (Dyck A and Zingales 2003).
Moreover, a master’s thesis at the U
­ niversity
of Missouri in 2008 found a ­direct relation-
ship between the tone of news coverage a
company receives on t­ elevision news shows
NBC “Nightly News,” CBS “Evening News,”
and ABC “World News,” and the public percep-
tion on its corporate reputation. The more
media coverage a company received, the
worse its corporate reputation (Jin 2008).
Journalists are “more reluctant to include
highly negative performance information or
make performance attributions that reflect
poorly on the CEO’s leadership” when the
executive became friendly with reporters,
according to a study in Organization Science
by James D. Westphal of the Ross School of
Business at the University of Michigan and
David L. Deephouse at the Alberta School
of Business at the University of Alberta
(Westphal and Deephouse 2010). Westphal
and Deephouse (2010, p. 1065) also found
that negative coverage in the media “has
the potential to incite retaliatory behavior
by the CEO. One possible form of retaliation
is to limit or cut off communication with the
offending journalist.”
Suggestions for Moving Forward
This history of some of the major business
journalism education efforts in academia
shows that two types of business journalism
academic programs have emerged over the
past 50 years—one that serves ­experienced
journalists and offers a m­ aster’s d
­egree,
12 © Business Expert Press 978-1-94858-042-7 (2018)
www.businessexpertpress.com
and the other that primarily trains under-
graduate journalism students. Both types
of curricula have had moderate success
in attracting interest from foundations,
businesses, and executives in involving
them in improving the quality of business
journalism, but those efforts have been
inconsistent.
In examining the creation and e ­ volution
of business journalism academic p ­ rograms,
one can see that funding from c­ orporations,
their foundations and their executives has
helped many of these efforts get off the
ground. However, these funding ­ efforts
are minimal when ­compared to the fund-
ing r­eceived for university programs in
business and other fields. For example,
the School of Pharmacy at UNC-Chapel
Hill has r­eceived a $100  million gift from
pharmaceutical company executive Fred
­Eshelman, but no c­ orporate funding for its
business j­ournalism program.
The lack of corporate and f­ oundation fund-
ing of business journalism p ­ rograms comes
at a time when the field is actually thriving
compared to other m ­ edia. The Wall Street
Journal is the only top 100 daily newspapers in
the United States that has seen an increase in
circulation in the past decade (Statista 2018).
The Economist and Financial Times have also
seen an i­ncrease in circulation—combined
print and digital—during this period (Roush
2017a; 2017b). Bloomberg News started in 1990
and has grown to more than 2,500 journal-
ists around the world. A ­10-year-old business
news site, Business Insider, was recently
sold to a German company for $450 million.
Even smaller business ­publications such as
those owned by American City Business
Journals have seen increases in circulation
and ­advertising revenue in the past decade
(Roush 2010). As noted at the beginning of
this article, improving the quality of business
journalism has been found to be beneficial
to businesses and economies.
The programs at Missouri, Columbia, and
Arizona State show that corporations and
foundations can successfully fund and build
business journalism curriculum. While
Expert Insights
 Partnering with Educators
­olumbia University lost some funding
C
when one corporation dropped its sponsor-
ship due to its distaste for coverage ­produced
by the program director, it r­ emained one of
the top, if not the top, ­business journalism
programs in the country. This shows that
academic units can survive pressure that
businesses may put on them.
If this historical review is any i­ndicator,
additional corporate involvement in busi-
ness journalism education would be
­beneficial to both universities and colleges
as well as corporations. As the demand
for journalists who can write about busi-
ness and the economy intensifies due to
changes in society, journalism programs
could look to corporations and executives,
who have a vested interest in the quality
of business journalism, for support and
guidance on how these programs can be
added, and how they expand and prolifer-
ate, across college campuses.
Further research could examine the atti-
tudes and opinions of corporate ­executives
and heads of foundations to determine what
factors would cause them to p ­ rovide assis-
tance to a business journalism p ­ rogram,
such as whether it is located in a college of
business.
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Expert Insights