One Benefit of Bloomberg's BW Purchase: Goodbye Maria Bartiromo

One of the many cockamamie decisions of the former BusinessWeek editor-in-chief, the soon-departing Steve Adler, was to hand over precious editorial space to fluff, ranging from a wine column to "Face Time" puff pieces by CNBC's Maria Bartiromo.

The column is gone, according to BW's Monica Roman Gagnier's Twitter feed:

Norm Pearlstine tells BW staffers Maria Bartiromo's FaceTime column is being killed in BusinessWeek, after the Bloomberg acquisition closes

Reminds me of what somebody said about the departure of Lou Dobbs from CNN: an "improvement by subtraction."

© 2009 Gary Weiss. All rights reserved.

Bulletin: Maria Bartiromo Not Fired

It's typical of the hysteria surrounding Maria Bartiromo that her not being fired is actually legitimate news. Keith Kelly points out in the New York Post today that Maria has not been canned by Business Week.

This is legit news, as I said, and in fact I had been wondering if Steve Adler would knuckle under to the headlines and kick her column out of Business Week. I'm not a big fan of her column, to say the least, but getting rid of her because of the "scandal" that has developed would have been a bad move.

There still hasn't been any convincing evidence, at least none that I've seen, that Maria actually did something wrong. Tasteless, yes. But unless she influenced CNBC's coverage of Citigroup (and there have been some titterings to that effect, but no hard evidence), I'd say it is time to leave the lady alone.

Or as they say on 13th Avenue, "leave her the f--- alone"!

© 2007 Gary Weiss. All rights reserved.

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Wall Street Versus America was published by Penguin USA on April 6.
Click here for its Amazon.com listing and here for more information on the book, from my web site.

The Best Take on 'Mariagate' So Far

It's from Yvette Kantrow, writing in TheDeal.com.

After briefly summing up the overblown and sometimes "incoherent" media coverage, she goes on to conclude:

What remains unanswered is: Did Bartiromo urge viewers to buy Citi's stock? To use its financial services? Was she noticeably easier on Citi than she was on similar firms? Did she, Henry Blodget-like, say one thing about Citi in private but something else about it in public? Maybe she did. Honestly, we don't know. Call us lazy, but we haven't watched all of the tapes or read all of the transcripts of her Citi reporting. But until someone does, we suggest calling off the dogs.

This needs to be read in conjunction with Pam Martens' Counterpunch articles, which give further needed perspective on the real issues in this ongoing media orgy.

© 2007 Gary Weiss. All rights reserved.

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Wall Street Versus America was published by Penguin USA on April 6.
Click here for its Amazon.com listing and here for more information on the book, from my web site.

A Valuable Perspective on the Bartiromo Saga

Pam Martens, ex-Smith Barney broker famed as the whistleblower in the "boom boom room" sexual harassment case, has a very intriguing two-part article in Counterpunch on the Maria Bartiromo controversy. Part one ran last weekend, part two yesterday.

Rather than deal with this as an ethical issue -- a non-starter in my view -- she digs a bit deeper and, instead, views Bartiromo as a "poster child for crony capitalism."

I don't agree with everything in these articles, but I think that Pam Martens has dug closer to the heart of the issue than anything I've read so far. The problem is not that anything "unethical" happened, but that the coziness of the media to big business has gone too far.

Ms. Martens observes as follows:

The real story, in my view, is that Ms. Bartiromo, a journalist, should not have been riding around on Citigroup's private jet on speaking tours with Citigroup clients. She should not have been considering a $5 million TV show sponsorship by Citigroup while masquerading as an impartial business journalist on CNBC. (She has conducted at least 11 Citigroup interviews over a two year period.)

The real story, in my view, is that as far back as 2002, when Sandy Weill controlled Citigroup with an iron fist and Chuck Prince was his top lieutenant, Ms. Bartiromo was not sounding very much like an impartial journalist on the back jacket of "King Of Capital: Sandy Weill and the Making of Citigroup." Here's what she said about a man who was about to explode in the news as the kingpin of one of the most corrupt businesses on Wall Street: "Sandy Weill is probably the best deal maker on the planet. He is truly one of the leading business titans of our times."

The real story is that Ms. Bartiromo is the new face of crony capitalism and the living embodiment of a corporate media that has lost its way so thoroughly that CNBC justifies Ms. Bartiromo's actions by brushing away the conflicts as simply "source development."

I think the last paragraph is a bit of an overstatement. But I do think that what she is saying here is important.

© 2007 Gary Weiss. All rights reserved.

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Wall Street Versus America was published by Penguin USA on April 6.
Click here for its Amazon.com listing and here for more information on the book, from my web site.

The 'I Factor' in the Bartiromo Coverage

Writing in Slate, Jack Shafer today wrestles with the "I Factor"-- "I" as in Innuendo -- in the media circus concerning Maria Bartiromo:

Delineating a friendship that includes a trans-Pacific flight alone in a corporate jet, an apparently significant sighting in an expensive restaurant, and a dressing down in which a corporate executive is told to reduce his contact with his friend of the opposite sex, all but draws the doughnut and tosses the hot dog through it.

There's another factor that hasn't been explored, which is the "J factor" -- the professional jealousy that I think is hovering beneath a lot of the coverage. Whether one likes her professional output or not (and I am not a big fan), there is no question that she has been smashingly successful. And then there is the fact that she is not terribly bad looking. Might there not be just a wee bit of jealousy behind all the media overkill?

© 2007 Gary Weiss. All rights reserved.

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Wall Street Versus America was published by Penguin USA on April 6.
Click here for its Amazon.com listing and here for more information on the book, from my web site.

Cozying Up to Sources

The Maria Bartiromo jet-thing just won't go away. David Carr weighs in today in the New York Times and makes an observation that caught my eye:

From the first school board meeting a young reporter covers, she learns to ally herself with the faction that has the interests of the citizenry at heart (in her estimation) and tilt that way for articles and sources.

I think it's far more common, actually, to ally oneself with the faction that happens to be controlling town government. Same principle applies to coverage of the SEC too, I've noticed.

Anyway, it will be interesting to see what happens next, as this Maria story definitely has legs. I still think it's overblown, but after learning about the "Money Honey trademark" thing I lost a lot of sympathy for the lady.

© 2007 Gary Weiss. All rights reserved.

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Wall Street Versus America was published by Penguin USA on April 6.
Click here for its Amazon.com listing and here for more information on the book, from my web site.

Here's a Real Biz Journalism Scandal

I hope the Maria Bartiromo kerfuffle brings attention to the real issues in business journalism.

For example, take a look at a memo published on the Poynter website that was sent to Dow Jones employees by their union. It observes that Dow Jones executives are demanding "staggering" increases in health care premiums while granting themselves hefty bonuses.

These bonuses are actually far from humongous when compared to some of the well-publicized largess bestowed on Bob Nardelli, Goldman Sachs, etc., but they raise an important issue (albeit one the union doesn't mention): as a result of publisher greed, journalism is increasingly a profession for the children of the independently wealthy.

Adjusted for inflation, the salary that I received at The Hartford Courant many moons ago -- to work as a cub reporter in a small city in southeastern Connecticut -- is higher than starting salaries today for small-publication financial journalists in New York City. And that's for jobs that actually pay a salary, since no-pay internships are common.

Now that is a scandal, one that effects the coverage that you see in the media, particularly the secondary outlets, every day.

UPDATE: Mind you, trademarking "Money Honey," while not scandalous, is really in the far out wastelands of bad taste. (Hat tip: Gawker).

© 2007 Gary Weiss. All rights reserved.

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Wall Street Versus America was published by Penguin USA on April 6.
Click here for its Amazon.com listing and here for more information on the book, from my web site.

The Overblown Maria-on-a-Jet Brouhaha

I'm having trouble getting worked up over this whole Maria Bartiromo-Citigroup-jet brouhaha. Today the New York Times had a story on the controversy on the front of its business section -- and on a hot news day, mind you. And now I see that some people are starting to call for Maria's head.

I agree that Maria may be, well..... a bit too close to one of the companies she covers. That, however, is hardly a hanging offense in journalism and in financial journalism in particular. I railed against media puffiness in Wall Street Versus America, but what troubled me was the substance of the coverage, not the ethics of the journos.

Where's the ethical issue here? Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see it. She flew around in a corporate jet, with the knowledge of her employer. (They were "preapproved" by CNBC, according to the Wall Street Journal.) She spoke to Citi clients, which I agree is not a great thing but, again, it was with the knowledge of her employer and is not against CNBC's ethical rules. Above all, she did not get paid for them.

There are plenty of reasons to get exercised over the financial press -- such as the puffiness (again that word) of much of the coverage, as exemplified by Maria's Business Week column. But flying around in somebody's jet, after full disclosure to one's employer, simply does not strike me as much of a sin.

I do see a possible issue in the 46 public appearances that Maria made on behalf of her employer in 2006. That's also not unprecedented, but seems a wee bit excessive. And again, where's the beef? Where's the effect on her coverage?

© 2007 Gary Weiss. All rights reserved.

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Wall Street Versus America was published by Penguin USA on April 6.
Click here for its Amazon.com listing and here for more information on the book, from my web site.