Tuesday 23 January 2007

Which Business section should you read?

Many people rarely pick up the business sections of the Daily or Sunday newspapers unless it is to look at personal work related issues. Nothing wrong with this but I also know that most of us choose a newspaper and then stick with it. Below in short I give my opinion on the business sections of some of the Daily's as a guide for you.

If anyone is interested I can do the Sunday's at a later time, need time to peruse a few more though. It has taken a couple of weeks to prepare for this post.

Feedback on my views appreciated as ever.

Daily's:

The Times; Actually quite weak, there business news rarely sets the agenda and it has to be said that the Murdoch agenda is never far from the news. Very much of the focus is on corporate news. Good for jobs though, still leads the others.

Telegraph: Easily the best of the daily's a whole section devoted to business news and led by editor-at-large Geoff Randall it has the ability to cover, corporate, national economic global issues.

Guardian: This is a pleasantly surprising business read given the political slant of the paper. Often the focus is on people in business, but this can add good depth to stories and overall I would place the business section just behind the Telegraph. Good for media as you would expect. Best for Media and Public sector jobs.

Independent: Not bad, but a very wide range of topics covered as you would expect. No real star's amongst its leader writers and often too little depth to the stories. heavily skewed towards personal finance.

Financial Times: You would expect this to come out highly, but I just can't rate it. Of course the depth is there/ Where though is the accessibility to its audience? Also has a terrible habit of printing press releases from corporate and using that to fill space. Even the famous Lex column has become a disappointment. Rather like reading the economist, you know what it will say before even reading the article. Poor for jobs outside of high finance too.


I can't begin to go through the tabloids, suffice to say they all play to their political agenda and I can't recall seeing any breaking news in any of them, except the The Daily Mail which broke the Pearson rumors first recently. Please ignore share-tipping advice and anything else you see here; You will have as much luck looking at the horoscopes.

One final mention though for free sheet The Metro in London. Excellent graphics, good accounts. It only has a page but does more with that than any of the other tabloids.

Overall, if you have time read the Telegraph, failing that the Times or Guardian. For pure summary pick up The Metro if you are in town.

18 comments:

Thomas said...

Thanks for that summary - I do enjoy reading the Telegraph's business section and it's good to know that it comes recommended by yourself.

Jeremy Jacobs said...

What about those two evening "freebies"?

Lizzie said...

Not in the habit of reading business news - mixture of lack of time & lack of interest. That said, very useful summary given here.

Incidentally, any good books/websites you'd recommend that give basic background stuff on the economy/business for newcomers?

Newmania said...

I haven’t looked at the business Press for ages . I look at Insurance media from time to time and I find the coverage of such matters in the Nationals is exceedingly trivial and apparently written by people who know next to nothing about it .
The other day there was a second page article that Motor rates were increasing due to bad drivers . Its at the level of a child. Motor rates are increasing because of the cycle of the market and even if they weren’t it could have nothing to with the goodness or badness of drivers . I wonder then if people working in the various fields covered feel the same when their part appears. “What are you talking about “ This must come from some Press office

The financial story that interest me at the moment is the travails of EMI . It appears that having invested the family furniture in Robbie Williams they let him write the material . It is well known that song writing credits are shared between a performer and the real songwriter so they share the royalties. The convenient fiction has gone on for ages much to my amuse ment . the Robbsters somg writer was aMr. Chmbers wgho he dumped I na fit of fat-Tap-dancer-from-Stockportishness. The resulting record was the worst , in the opinion of many , ever made . It appears that the Robbster actually believed the fiction and EMI let him get on with it .

It has a satisfyingly Faustian feel to it don`t you think.

Anonymous said...

It's all very well but why do none of these overpaid hacks ever do any investigative work? Wew all know there are extraordinary stories out there.

OK, I know the answer, it is self-censorship due to the potential impact on advertising revenue.

I was once, ahem, close(-ish) to a Grande Scandale that was being widely reported, mostly rubbish. Who rang me up for some basic Q&A / actual research?

FT ? Telegraph?

Nope: just the NYT, & good old Private Eye

CityUnslicker said...

JJ - my opinion on the evening free sheets is that they must have a target audience of young women for their key demographic. I have not seen much of interest there.

Lizzie - easy in understanding I find is Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations. Long yes, but summarises most of what you need to know in very understandable terms, i.e. before jargon was invented.

As for good websites, Wat Tyler's Burning Our Money I think is quite accessible and gives good accounts of economic developments.

N - Robbie has made a mess at EMI they deserve it. Their staff in Brasil have also hand their hands in the till big time recently. The industry as a whole coped badly with ipod/downloading. A difficult external shock to overcome. EMI will be in intensive care for a while yet. It may not even make it.

Nick (and N) - can't say I disagree with you re the level of reporting. To be fair the few business reporters there are have to cover all the industries and understanding the deep issues is a big ask indeed. Having said that they don't really look to investigate in the same way that I would posit they don't often investigate a lot of political stories. They have too much skin in the game as you say.
Still some infomation is better than none!

James Higham said...

This is truly fascinating. I've been trying for a long time to get a line on which is the best to access for finance and business news and you've done it here for me. Thanks.

Welshcakes Limoncello said...

Hi, cityunslicker. When in the UK, I didn't mind the Guardian bus section but got lost in all the others, I can tell you, as I don't understand all that stuff. But I'd be interested if you'd do the Sundays as well some time. I read them all on the net.
This is going to sound terrible and as if I only came over to plug my own blog, but Ellee tells me you are a Nelson fan and that I should tell you I have just posted about my visit to the Nelson Castle here in Sicily. So I have!
Did you watch the 18 Doughty St programme on which your blog was mentioned? Well done!

Anonymous said...

I 'skim' the telegraph business section. I don't have the cash to buy shares yet, so am more interested with getting my head around general economic stuff like interest rates and inflation than the company information.

I like the FT for politcal and world news. It doesn't have the bias of politcal papers. I never knew it wasn't highly rated as a business paper though.

When I was in London I found it a lot easier to just pop down the city on a Friday evening and ask rich looking people in pin-stripe suits about financial stuff I was ineterested in. Can't do that up here in the North but at least there a chance I might actually save some money to invest one day.

Rigger Mortice said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
CityUnslicker said...

james - you welcome

Limonello - thanks for that. I did not see 18DS. Am travelling round UK this week with work. Which one was it?

S- Getting info from source is the right way to go. If you up North now you'll just have to hang around the bars in leeds city square?!

- with requests for the sunday's I'll guess I have to do that now...

Snafu said...

And what about The Economist!?!

Shades said...

(old joke alert...)

I buy the Financial Times...


...because I have a pink bathroom...

CityUnslicker said...

Don't get me started on the economist. very formulaic.

Ian - a new one on me. I think you may have a pink bathroom for real though....

Anonymous said...

What a brilliant idea, no-one else does this and I really need bringing up to date on these pages. I shall look out for it regularly.

Welshcakes Limoncello said...

Hi again. It was the Jan 22nd "Doughty St" - near the end. Buona notte e auguri.

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