How Blogs are Changing Business Journalism for the Better

Herb Greenberg is asked:

Q: How do you see online business journalism changing in the next 10 to 20 years?A: More blurring of the line between what is and what isn’t real journalism. People whose backgrounds and biases haven’t been vetted can get instant credibility, through sites like Seeking Alpha, which can result in blog posts that get included under a ticker on Yahoo Finance. This is chipping away at the value of what we do. Doesn’t mean what they do isn’t good work. It certainly increases the competition.

God knows there aren't nearly enough Herb Greenbergs – the kind of journalists who spend hours poring over SEC filings, trying to make sense of what companies are reporting. It's a noble calling, and a skill that the likes of Greenberg (or Peter Eavis, or Floyd Norris) has honed over the years. But clearly you don't need to be a journalist to do it: the people who do it best are the short-sellers who are the very best sources for such journalists. In any case, anything which "increases the competition" in terms of the supply of this kind of material is a decidedly positive development.

I also think that Greenberg is doing himself something of a disservice if he thinks that people read and trust him because he's been "vetted" by his employer. Not at all: I'm quite comfortable saying that people trust Herb Greenberg more than they trust Marketwatch. Remember that in any kind of poll, journalists barely beat out politicians in terms of trustworthiness.

So the posters on Seeking Alpha go through exactly the same credibility-building process that Greenberg and Eavis and Norris did: they publish their analysis, open it up to public examination, and if their material consistently withstands scrutiny, people start to trust them. In no way does this chip away at the value of what journalists do; in fact, it is what journalists do. The difference between the Seeking Alpha posters and what Greenberg calls "real" journalists is basically just that "real" journalists get paid by news organizations, while the Seeking Alpha posters (generally) don't.

But in these days when there is no shortage of incompetent editors at business sections throughout the country, I wouldn't assume that a random journalist was any more trustworthy than a random financial blogger. In both cases, I would judge their material on its merits. In that sense, the rise of blogging is helping the cause of financial journalism, in that it's creating a generation of engaged and critical readers. If your readers are sheep who believe whatever you write just because it's in the paper, that breeds complacency and laziness. But no US journalist is in that position today.