Author Archive

Articles by Ryan Chittum | Email the Author

 

1. The Audit

   Audit Notes: Facebook IPO edition

   May 21, 2012 05:03 PM

   I'm happy to say I was wrong (and Felix was right) in guessing that retail investors would jump into Facebook shares and push it significantly higher. The stock stayed even on Friday only with the massive support of... Continue reading

2. The Audit

   The Chicago Tribune lights up the flame-retardant industry

   May 21, 2012 11:07 AM

   A tremendous Chicago Tribune investigation into flame-retardant chemical manufacturers shows how they push their poisons on an unsuspecting public despite repeated findings that their products do nothing to prevent or delay fires. It's a sordid tale of powerful corporations,... Continue reading

3. The Audit

   A game of telephone fools the Times

   May 18, 2012 03:00 PM

   The New York Times posts a nasty correction on its Sunday op-ed by William Deresiewicz, who asserted that a study had found that 10 percent of people on Wall Street were "clinical psychopaths." That 10-percent-psycho baloney was the lead... Continue reading

4. The Audit

   Audit notes: Questions for JPMorgan, hindsight journalism, Ticketmaster

   May 17, 2012 06:11 PM

   ProPublica's Jesse Eisinger, in his NYT DealBook column, writes about what the press and the authorities should be asking about JPMorgan's $3 billion (and counting) loss: The first lesson of the financial crisis is not that the capital markets... Continue reading

5. The Audit

   The Facebook frenzy

   May 17, 2012 11:00 AM

   The Wall Street Journal's page-one Facebook IPO story does a good job of capturing some uncomfortable parallels to the dot.com bubble. The Journal profiles three investors to give us a feel for how people are thinking about the most... Continue reading

6. The Audit

   What’s the right price for ebooks? (updated)

   May 16, 2012 11:00 AM

   Author Chuck Windig, GigaOm's Mathew Ingram, and TechDirt's Mike Masnick all took on the question of ebook pricing recently, arguing that production costs (you know, minor details like advances, editors, etc.) don't or shouldn't factor into the end price. Ingram... Continue reading

7. The Audit

   Audit notes: Commercialization, GM and Facebook, Saverin’s taxes

   May 15, 2012 11:15 PM

   Conor Friedersdorf makes a nice catch on Tom Friedman's Sunday column bemoaning the commercialization of seemingly all aspects of American life: For example, his column is bizarrely titled, "This Column Is Not Sponsored by Anyone," despite the fact... Continue reading

8. The Audit

   The business press embarrasses Jamie Dimon

   May 14, 2012 11:04 AM

   In what FT Alphaville called "the most excruciating bank conference call we’ve ever heard," press favorite Jamie Dimon announced last week that JPMorgan Chase has lost more than $2 billion on bad derivatives bets made by its chief... Continue reading

9. The Audit

   Audit notes: Chesapeake woes, the Untaxable, Reuters on HSBC

   May 11, 2012 07:34 PM

   The hits keep coming at Chesapeake Energy. Today, it's The Wall Street Journal's turn. It reports on page one that the company has put $1.4 billion in unreported liabilities off its balance sheet, far more than analysts had estimated.... Continue reading

10. The Audit

    The Washington Post Co.’s Self-Destructive Course

    May 11, 2012 06:10 AM

    The Washington Post Company‘s dismal quarterly earnings release last week was received with something of a shrug—more of the same. But the report is worse than the reaction suggests and raises fundamental questions about the Post's strategy, not just... Continue reading

11. The Audit

    Audit notes: WSJ dings austerity, Weisenthal, The Global Mail

    May 10, 2012 07:58 PM

    If you're looking to get up to speed on what happened with the euro and Greece, you could do a lot worse than Marcus Walker's excellent page-one story in The Wall Street Journal today. The Journal recounts how Angela... Continue reading

12. The Audit

    Audit notes: Blodget’s anonymous Zuck fans, Ongo no-go, social news apps

    May 10, 2012 02:12 AM

    Here's the sourcing in Business Insider CEO Henry Blodget's New York cover story on Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg: "a colleague of Zuckerberg," "another early colleague of Zuckerberg," "one Silicon Valley veteran," "one Valley veteran," "A Zuckerberg confidant," "one insider,"... Continue reading

13. The Audit

    Clearly, Quartz wants to help elites go optimize themselves

    May 10, 2012 12:58 AM

    The Atlantic's big new business-journalism project is off to an inauspicious start. First there's the name: Quartz, which is different, and that doesn’t mean worse, necessarily, but…whatever. It's a name. Here's the press release explaining why the venture... Continue reading

14. The Audit

    Audit Notes: Murdoch’s Influence, Reuters’s Chesapeake drumbeat

    May 9, 2012 06:10 AM

    The News Corp. scandal is so massive and so sprawling that it's just about impossible to bring all the pieces together to see a relatively complete picture. So find some time to read this remarkable 8,000-word essay by openDemocracy founder... Continue reading

15. The Audit

    Audit notes: News Corp.’s board, Lehman’s hubris, Awards and Slideshows

    May 8, 2012 12:55 AM

    David Carr takes a look at the News Corporation board of directors, which is as stacked with the CEO's cronies as any board out there—and that's saying something: Like many media companies (including the one I work for), News... Continue reading

16. The Audit

    The housing market at an inflection point

    May 7, 2012 07:00 AM

    After seven or so years of bearishness on housing, I decided a few weeks back that the market was probably at or near bottom, and my wife and I started to think about buying. I may have been a couple... Continue reading

17. The Audit

    Audit notes: Still pro-euro, foreclosures, privatized parking meters

    May 4, 2012 05:24 PM

    British Labour politician Peter Mandelson takes to the Financial Times to argue that, after all we've seen, the UK should still tether itself to the euro down the line. Wow: Saving the single currency is about to push the... Continue reading

18. The Audit

    Facebook’s low, low ad rates

    May 4, 2012 04:00 PM

    The Wall Street Journal has a nice piece on advertisers' doubts about Facebook. As I noted a few months ago, Facebook brings in just penny a day of revenue for each of its users and its rate of... Continue reading

19. The Audit

    The most important journalist in business news

    May 4, 2012 10:56 AM

    Quick: Who's the most important journalist in business news? Is it The Wall Street Journal's Robert Thomson or Paul Gigot? The New York Times's Larry Ingrassia, Andrew Ross Sorkin, or, as Dean has argued, Gretchen Morgenson? Bloomberg's Matt Winkler?... Continue reading

20. The Audit

    Audit notes: Dollar dictator, the SEC’s small fry, Americans go Swiss

    May 4, 2012 02:21 AM

    The Atlantic's Matthew O'Brien, whom you should really be reading, raises an important point lost in all the discussion about Ben Bernanke and whether he's doing enough to combat unemployment. Last Sunday in The New York Times Magazine, Paul... Continue reading

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