Felix Salmon, the finance blogger for Reuters and a leading voice on financial and economic issues, has been appointed the Columbia Journalism Review’s next Peterson Fellow, writing on the media’s coverage of fiscal and economic matters.
Funded by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, the Peterson Fellowship was created to encourage the business and political media to take the long view. Felix will cover the media’s handling of the federal budget, unemployment, income disparities, the national debt, entitlement programs, taxes, and the other economic policy questions.
It’s deep, complicated stuff, but the economy is the most important domestic story of our time. Addressing it will require journalism at its most sophisticated, dogged, creative, and courageous level. Felix will help guide the way.
In essence, Reuters is sharing Felix, who will continue to blog for Reuters.com while working part time for CJR. Felix’s media criticism as Peterson Fellow will run on CJR’s business desk, The Audit, and its politics and policy desk, Campaign Desk.
“We’re excited to bring Felix’s omnivorous intellect, high-powered gaze, rapacious reading, and pointed prose to CJR and to the coverage of economic and fiscal policy, where it is badly needed,” says Mike Hoyt, CJR executive editor.
Felix has been blogging since 1999, most recently (before Reuters) for Market Movers, a financial blog on Portfolio.com. Felix arrived in the United States in 1997 from England, where he worked at Euromoney magazine. He also wrote daily commentary on Latin American markets for the former news service, Bridge News, freelanced for a variety of publications, helped set up the New York bureau of a financial website, and created the Economonitorblog for Roubini Global Economics.
He succeeds Holly Yeager, who was recently named Middle East and Asia Editor of The Washington Post.
Dean Starkman Dean Starkman runs The Audit, CJR’s business section, and is the author of The Watchdog That Didn’t Bark: The Financial Crisis and the Disappearance of Investigative Journalism (Columbia University Press, January 2014). Follow Dean on Twitter: @deanstarkman.