Monday, October 30
2 p.m. EDT
There’s a lot to be learned from today’s young financial journalists through their strong beat reporting.
Take Jillian Berman, 28, of MarketWatch, for example. Her work covering the student-debt crisis earned her this year’s Larry Birger Young Journalist Award, which honors journalists under the age of 30. The judges of the contest noted that on this extensively covered topic, Berman repeatedly found new story angles. She dug through mounds of data, distilled complex information and told compelling stories of those affected by this crisis.
On SABEW’s next teletraining session, hear from Berman, as well as our Birger award finalists Sarah Freir of Bloomberg and Jen Wieczner of Fortune, as they discuss how they work sources, develop their beats and uncover unique ways to tell important stories.
Moderator
Jon Chesto, a business reporter for the Boston Globe, served as Larry Birger Young Business Journalist prize judging team chair. Jon covers the leaders who shape Boston’s business community. He has been reporting on business and politics in New England for the past two decades. Before joining the Globe, he was managing editor at the Boston Business Journal. Prior to that role, he was the business editor at The Patriot Ledger in Quincy. His weekly Ledger column, “Mass. Market,” won several national awards with SABEW. A graduate of Wesleyan University and Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism, he has also worked as a business reporter at the Boston Herald and as a political reporter with Ottaway Newspapers.
Panelists
Jillian Berman, a New York-based reporter for MarketWatch, is the 2017 winner of the Larry Birger Young Business Journalist contest, honoring journalists younger than 30. Berman focuses on student debt. Previously, she worked as a business reporter for HuffPost, covering retail and food companies as well as gender politics at work. Her work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today and Bloomberg.
Sarah Frier is a technology reporter at Bloomberg News, where she is focused on breaking news and writing features about social media companies including Facebook and Snap. Her work appears on Bloomberg.com, in Bloomberg Businessweek and on Bloomberg Television. In her more than six years at Bloomberg, she has received several awards from SABEW. Sarah’s most praised award was for her in depth investigation into the online flourishing fake id card market. Doing undercover orders from numerous id makers and finding one site that made an identical to real scannable fake id. Was amazing to watch how easy it was to use this identity card to enter and pass everywhere Sarah tested.
Jen Wieczner is a senior writer at Fortune covering Wall Street, finance and cryptocurrency. She has profiled business leaders including two-time Fortune 500 CEO Meg Whitman; controversial Mylan CEO Heather Bresch; and hedge fund billionaire Steve Cohen, featuring his first interview since his involvement in a record-breaking insider trading case. Recently, she launched The Ledger, a publication within Fortune dedicated to covering the intersection of money and technology. Previously, Jen covered health care for MarketWatch and The Wall Street Journal. Her work has also appeared in SmartMoney, The Atlantic, Fast Company, New York, Edible Manhattan, Boston, Glamour and Marie Claire. In 2017, she received the American Society of Magazine Editors “Next” Award honoring journalists under 30. Originally from Boston, Jen graduated from Northwestern University with a B.S. in journalism.
