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As Ryan Chittum noted on Saturday, Yvette Kantrow, a columnist and editor with The Deal, a Wall Street trade publication owned by Wall Street investors, suggests that The Audit recently failed to write something for fear of offending a Wall Street funder.
In the column, âThe Sound of Silence,â she says—or rather asks pointedly whether—our failure to review the excellent anti-Goldman Sachs polemic by Matt Taibbi in the recent Rolling Stone was due to the fact that Goldman gave us $25,000 this year.
This was embarrassing. Fortunately, not for us.
A torqued-off Chittum, who handles our daily blog, pointed out that the only problems in Kantrowâs column were the facts surrounding the Taibbi piece and our record regarding Goldman.
I wonât repeat what he said, but itâs worth emphasizing that Ryan told her in response to a query prior to her post, he was actually working on a piece that praised the Taibbi article at the very moment she wrote him. He had it up by the end of the day.
So the âsilenceâ wasnât silence after all.
When informed of that inconvenient fact, Kantrow then implied in her column that Chittum wrote his piece in response to her query: âHe also said he would include the Taibbi story in a roundup of Goldmanâs earnings coverage that would run the next day.â
Thatâs pretty rotten. In fact, as he told her, he was writing for that very night, Wednesday, which is indeed when the column posted.
But Ryan at this point is a battle-scarred blogger. He doesnât need anybodyâs help.
The Kantrow column reminded me of the Sotomayor hearings that had white, male Southern senators criticizing the Latina nominee for alleged racism. Itâs upside-down. A Wall Street organ owned by Wall Street interests slamming The Audit—which, to the point of tedium, takes the press to task for its weak Wall Street coverage—for being insufficiently tough on people like those who own The Deal.
Whatâs behind it?
I feel a bit hurt personally because, having been asked by Kantrow for my take on the question, I crafted a fairly lengthy reply, but wasnât quoted at all! Waah! This is unfair (sniffle), not least because, besides all my stuff about Goldman in CJR, I wanted another chance to plug my latest freelance piece in The Nation, a profile of Gretchen Morgenson, which leads with and holds up for praise—yet again—her expose last September of Goldmanâs stake in the AIG bailout. I spend much ink debunking Goldmanâs mistaken idea that it had somehow been wronged by the Times (apart from a blown fact that was subsequently corrected) and spent hours on the phone arguing with
Goldman people over that story. And this is the thanks I get (sob)?
Kantrow had a fair column about our conflicts and how well we do or donât manage them. But this one had an extra twist—unkind musings on why we might tank a Goldman piece.
We were tempted speculate that the silence may stem from the fact that Goldman is one of the Auditâs backersâŚThat could make it decidedly awkward for the site to deal with Taibbiâs takedown. Itâs a tough situation. Praise the Taibbi and piss off a funder; tear the story apart and look like its mouthpiece.
Or, dum-dee-dum, maybe it’s something else! Hmm. Iâm tempted to speculate that Iâm Lloyd Blankfeinâs love child! Yvette, do go on, you little scamp. The possibilities are limitless, and we find this
baseless speculation strangely arousing!
Actually, the Deal has had it in for The Audit for a while. It makes us feel bad. But, believe it or not, thereâs something bigger to consider in this little spat:
Kantrow is right about one thing. As she says, The Audit has ârepeatedly railed about the business pressâs failure to take on big financial institutions.â Audit Readers, that failure is real; it is now documented; and it clearly implicates the insular business-press culture of which The Deal is certainly a part, albeit in an extreme form.
If The Audit is about anything, it is about pushing back against a financial press culture that grows ever narrower in its focus, more geared toward investors, less toward citizens, more about comings and goings of big shots, less about the consequences of these clownsâ decisions, more about access, less about accountability, more timid, less imaginative, and generally more inclined to spend resources chasing deals and other petty scoops like a pack of greyhounds after a mechanical rabbit. These trends represent a retreat from business journalismâs own traditions, and we donât like it.
Donât kid yourself. Behind the bickering of two small journals are competing ideas about journalism.
Basically, weâre against dealism. Weâre for i-dealism, and, for that matter, business journalism—broad, robust, sophisticated, plugged-in, arms-length, and courageous.
As Iâve said before, we like deals (and, for that matter, inside-Wall Street-coverage) as much as the next financial-media-critic blog. But business journalism is much bigger than that.
Most business reporters know what Iâm talking about, even if the cynics donât. It is the reporters who have to operate inside the invisible fence that defines what is and isnât a business story, and they have every interest in widening the field. Theyâre ready for a new direction. All it takes is leadership.
And so it is true, we have a big bone to pick with the business press, especially when it comes to its coverage of Wall Street. So should all readers.
But let me say this in defense of the mainstream bizpress, including and especially my former colleagues at The Wall Street Journal, which, as the financial mediaâs flagship and agenda-setter, has come under some of our toughest criticism: whatever our differences, they make their arguments, if sometimes heatedly, on the merits, without cheesy speculation as to motive. Maybe they assume we argue in good faith. Maybe they think we might have a point. Or maybe theyâre just pros.
Kantrow and The Deal go a different way. They donât like The Audit. Thatâs clear. It makes sense, and itâs all right with us.
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