When government fails, 'business has to step up'

Businesses like to devote part of their marketing and public relations budget to promote how they are  giving back to society. We are not just about profits, they try to say. And the message is arguably true, not just propaganda, as far as it goes.

Fink, from BlackRock.com

But we are starting to hear a different kind of message from business people, and it goes like this:

"Around the world, frustration with years of stagnant wages, the effect of technology on jobs, and uncertainty about the future have fueled popular anger, nationalism, and xenophobia. In response, some of the world’s leading democracies have descended into wrenching political dysfunction, which has exacerbated, rather than quelled, this public frustration. Trust in multilateralism and official institutions is crumbling." -- Larry Fink,
(emphasis mine)

Business people will have to fill the gap left by polarized and paralyzed national governments: this is the message of Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, the world's largest mutual fund company. Businesses have to show that they have a higher purpose than just making money. And, by the way, it's in your own interest to do so, he says. BlackRock has used its position as a major shareholder of some companies to push for more socially conscious policies.

(More coverage of Fink's letter was in Bloomberg, Forbes, and Reuters, among others.)

'Every journalist has to be a user-experience designer'

Maria Ramirez of El Español interviews Gideon Lichfield.
(Photo: TIE Comunicación/Congreso Periodismo)

HUESCA, Spain -- A digital business publication like Quartz qz.com would seem to be making all the right moves. In just over two years it built an audience of 10.9 million unique users a month.

(Versión en español)

But the struggle is to continue growing amid heavy competition and to start turning a profit. So Quartz's senior editor, Gideon Lichfield, was looking for answers and ideas just like the other 350 journalists, professors, and students attending the XVI Digital Journalism Congress. He was also on the program to talk about Quartz, including its plans for expansion into Africa.

Win the competition

Lichfield worked for The Economist for 16 and knows both the print and digital worlds. Digital requires journalists to think more about the audience, he told me in an interview. "How people consume the journalism, how it reaches them, when they're reading it and so forth, that is completely different," he said. "In a print magazine, you don't really think about any of that. The formats are set.

"In digital, every journalist also has to be a user-experience designer to some extent. They have to be thinking about how is someone going to come across my article, what's going to make them read it, what's going to make them share it, what's going to make them get to the end. What sort of device are they going to be reading it on. What time of day might they be reading it. What methods could I be using other than text to get my point across more clearly, more efficiently."

New Yorker's Osnos: Good writing flows from deep reporting

Versión en español aquí.

New Yorker writer Evan Osnos is as fine a storyteller in person as he is in print. Tsinghua University journalism students left their texting thumbs idle Oct. 24 as he told how he profiled a former barber named Siu Yun Ping, who won close to $100 million at baccarat in Macau.

Osnos shared some trade secrets about writing for The New Yorker, which is known for its profiles of the famous and obscure.

The best writing starts with deep reporting, he said. It flows from the detail gathered from court documents, news clips, obscure academic dissertations, neglected public archives and reluctant interview subjects. In other words, gather the facts, and you will have the material for colorful writing.

Financial website integrates data on Central America

Versión en español.

It was out of frustration that Carlos Mora de la Orden started collecting and organizing information about the economy and stock market in his home country of Costa Rica.

Although an engineer by training, he is a financial adviser by profession. He wanted to provide his clients reliable, up-to-date information untainted by political or business interests.



Much of the information he wanted was hard to get. He decided to start collecting and publishing it himself. That was 14 years ago.