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The business end

Monday, 17th December 2007

Peter Wilby has an interesting piece at Media Guardian on the rise of the business journalist:

Nothing better illustrates how the country and its press have changed in the past 25 years than the rise and rise of the business journalist. This month, James Harding, the Times business editor and formerly a Financial Times stalwart, became editor of the paper. In treading the path from business to the editor's chair, he follows Robert Thomson, his predecessor at the Times; Will Lewis, the Daily Telegraph editor; and Patience Wheatcroft, who was briefly and unhappily in charge at the Sunday Telegraph. Examples from further back include David Yelland (the Sun), Will Hutton (the Observer), and Andreas Whittam Smith, founder and first editor of the Independent.
...The change came about sometime in the 80s. I suggest two reasons. First, the country in general and the press in particular became more obsessed with money. Financial services are now so important to the economy that, to understand how Britain works, it is necessary to understand what hedge funds, derivatives, libor rates and sub-prime mortgages actually are.
Bankers and business people carry weight in the highest circles of even a Labour government, as trade-union leaders did 30 years ago. Because such people sit on government committees and chair inquiries, a business journalist will have contacts as well-placed as those of the political staff. Moreover, most Britons are now, as Margaret Thatcher intended, not just consumers (rather than citizens, workers or professionals) but also investors. Even if they do not directly own shares, most newspaper readers have an interest in pension schemes that depend on stock-market movements, in house prices and, as borrowers or savers, in interest rates.
Second, newspapers are themselves money-making businesses, in a sense they were not 30 years ago.