Nice article on MotherJones.com by former Wall Street Journal reporter Dean Starkman about the inward state of business journalism.
Increasingly, business coverage has addressed its audience as investors rather than citizens, a subtle but powerful shift in perspective that has led to some curious choices. The Journal, for example, at times seemed to strain to find someone other than Wall Street to blame for the mortgage mess: A December 2007 story announced that borrower fraud “goes a long way toward explaining why mortgage defaults and foreclosures are rocking financial institutions,” though no such evidence exists.
There is another trend too. Business coverage tends address its audience as consumers more than citizens. The market for business-news-for-citizens has dried up a while ago and consumer-oriented news coverage (product reviews, marketing news, personal finance advice, …) caters to a larger (read: less financially literate) and thus easier to reach audience.
