By NYU Staff

In his column Business Is a Beat Deflated, David Carr, media columnist for the New York Times, has predicted the demise of business journalism. He does have cause for alarm. BusinessWeek was recently sold to Bloomberg;  Fortune slashed the number of issues annually, and Forbes recently axed 50 jobs. But this only follows from the demise of print media and not the end of business coverage.

His concerns arise from the recent meltdown on Wall Street, but Carr errs to believe that business journalism begins and ends on Wall Street. Carr’s fundamental flaw is that he completely misses the role of a business journalist.

Here’s what Carr says:

“Business coverage has been, at its heart, aspirational, a brand promise that suggests that if you clip the right articles, internalize the right rhetoric, then you too will end up as one of the shiny, happy people striding boldly across the pages of magazines with names like Fortune, Money, Fast Company and Wired.”

That’s a narrow and parochial view of business journalism. Promoting aspirational stories is not the only goal of business journalism.  Business reporters don’t just repackage business stories. Dying industries, unemployment, bankruptcies, product liability litigations –  these are all stories of business failures. And they all receive coverage by business writers. Companies raising money to build bridges across the country is a business story, meltdown or otherwise. What’s more, I don’t see what is so happy, glamorous or aspirational about SEC filings, FDA dockets, or even court documents.

Carr also says, “How hot and bothered is a reader supposed to get about an algorithm? And no one wants to read a magazine about the sovereign funds, foreign investors and bargain hunters from afar who seem to be the real power in buying in at the bottom.” Nothing can be further from the truth. An important facet of the digital challenge facing traditional media is the fact that readers are way smarter now and it is the journalists that need to recognize it and catch up. The columnist would be surprised to know how many of NYT’s readers would actually be interested in Google algorithms.

Beyond that, it’s important to remember that newspapers aren’t the only places where the skills of a business journalist are needed. Business journalists, more  that others, await a happy ending. Ask any recruiter.