orson
December 30th, 2009, 04:44 PM
I wanted to post this the other week when I first heard it but it slipped my mind. Then another thread here flirting with the economic debacle of the past few years reminded me...
Link to the full audio story: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120963360
Excertps:
Bloomberg News reporter Mark Pittman died last week at age 52. Although he was not well-known outside Bloomberg, Pittman was a legend inside it. His reporting on credit default swaps suggested the likelihood of a market collapse. Pittman also questioned the financial viability of the pre-crash mortgage culture.
Pittman died of a heart-related condition last week and he is survived by a wife and three daughters. I spoke to Pittman just a few weeks back about his work for Bloomberg, which he joined in 1997. He was a irreverent, curious, passionate and easy to outrage, especially about this metastasizing story. He was self-taught on financial matters, but his acute analyses were almost unsurpassed among journalists. Yet, you've likely never heard of Mark Pittman. Before I wanted to learn more about coverage of the financial crisis, I had never heard of him and I report on the news business. That's the tricky thing about Bloomberg News. It's enormously profitable and its articles are read by investors and by influential figures in Washington and on Wall Street. But its reporting doesn't otherwise get a very big audience, at least not yet.
For the past decade, many of the country's most prominent financial journalists made names for themselves swimming in the same currents as corporate chieftains. Magazines and newspapers obsessed over corner office intrigues. And cable channels celebrated the cunning involved in the creation of these new ways to mask risk and boost profits.
Mark Pittman didn't. He didn't pop up on the cable talk shows or the pages of Vanity Fair. Instead, the guy actually got his editors at Bloomberg to sue the ultimate insiders, the Fed. That's right. He sued the Federal Reserve Board for access to documents about the bailout and won. That's unheard of. The ruling is on appeal. It's a shame the ultimate financial reporter won't be around to cover what new secrets the case ultimately yields.
David Folkenflik, NPR News, New York.
Link to the full audio story: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120963360
Excertps:
Bloomberg News reporter Mark Pittman died last week at age 52. Although he was not well-known outside Bloomberg, Pittman was a legend inside it. His reporting on credit default swaps suggested the likelihood of a market collapse. Pittman also questioned the financial viability of the pre-crash mortgage culture.
Pittman died of a heart-related condition last week and he is survived by a wife and three daughters. I spoke to Pittman just a few weeks back about his work for Bloomberg, which he joined in 1997. He was a irreverent, curious, passionate and easy to outrage, especially about this metastasizing story. He was self-taught on financial matters, but his acute analyses were almost unsurpassed among journalists. Yet, you've likely never heard of Mark Pittman. Before I wanted to learn more about coverage of the financial crisis, I had never heard of him and I report on the news business. That's the tricky thing about Bloomberg News. It's enormously profitable and its articles are read by investors and by influential figures in Washington and on Wall Street. But its reporting doesn't otherwise get a very big audience, at least not yet.
For the past decade, many of the country's most prominent financial journalists made names for themselves swimming in the same currents as corporate chieftains. Magazines and newspapers obsessed over corner office intrigues. And cable channels celebrated the cunning involved in the creation of these new ways to mask risk and boost profits.
Mark Pittman didn't. He didn't pop up on the cable talk shows or the pages of Vanity Fair. Instead, the guy actually got his editors at Bloomberg to sue the ultimate insiders, the Fed. That's right. He sued the Federal Reserve Board for access to documents about the bailout and won. That's unheard of. The ruling is on appeal. It's a shame the ultimate financial reporter won't be around to cover what new secrets the case ultimately yields.
David Folkenflik, NPR News, New York.