Joe Livingston

By Jeremy Osir

Business journalist Joseph Livingston’s legacy extends well past the realm of business and economics journalism. From the classroom to the Federal Reserve, Livingston’s impact was, and still is, being felt.

Born in New York City on Feb. 10, 1905, Livingston received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan. Livingston wed Rosalie Logise Frenger in 1927, and their marriage would last 62 years until his death in 1989.

Livingston belonged to a rare breed of journalist. He had a deep understanding of economics. The blending of his journalistic abilities with his considerable knowledge of his field set him apart. Temple University manuscripts report that Livingston audited economics classes at the College of the City of New York in 1929.

Between 1931 and 1934, Livingston served as executive editor of the New York Daily Investment News. After a short stint as public utilities editor for Financial World in New York City, Temple University records state that Livingston began working as an economics editor at Business Week’s New York offices. He went on to hold the position of staff economist for the publication.

During World War II, Livingston took a leave of absence from business journalism to work with the U.S. government from 1942-1945.

In 1947, Livingston began working at the Washington Post. It was around this time that he began his most famous semi-weekly column, “The Business Outlook,” which would he would go on to write until his death some 42 years later. Originally named “Minding Your Business,” the column focused primarily on economic issues. It became nationally syndicated in late 1947 and went on to appear in more than 50 newspapers across the country.

Livingston’s take on column writing is revealed in a quote attributed to him by the Business News Luminary website.

“Column writing involves yielding to your prejudices after a hard fight,” he said. “You try not to grind axes, but you often have to take a position. You try to divorce your strongest feelings from your writing and you try to be fair, but that’s the way it is.”

In July 1948, Livingston became the financial editor of the Philadelphia Bulletin. He wrote columns for the paper until 1972.

From January 1971 to June 1972, Livingston was an honorary professor of economics at Temple University. Livingston then moved to the Philadelphia Inquirer in 1972, where he remained until his death in 1989.

The Livingston Survey is a part of Livingston’s legacy that survives to this day. In 1946, Livingston began a semi-annual survey in which he asked economists to provide forecasts of key macroeconomic variables. These included real and nominal gross domestic product, inflation, unemployment rates, and interest rates.

Herbert Stein, a member of the National Association of Business Economists, praised Livingston’s enterprise in an obituary.

“Joe was no armchair, thumb-sucking economic journalist, living on summaries of the studies of economists. He went out for the facts, to see for himself what could be seen and to talk with the active people, here and abroad,” Stein wrote.

What started out merely as material for a column quickly gained steam. In a 1997 paper titled, “The Livingston Survey: Still Useful After All These Years,” the head of the macroeconomics section of the Philadelphia Fed Research Department Dean Croushore wrote that economists eventually began to take note of Livingston’s work.

“As economists began seeking ways to test the rational expectations theory, they turned to the Livingston Survey, which was the only good collection of forecasts of macroeconomic variables,” Croushore wrote.

In 1978, the Philadelphia Fed collaborated with Livingston and entered the survey data into a computer database where it was readily available for economists. When Livingston died in 1989, the Fed took over this survey, which it still administers to this day.

Livingston, one of the original founders of the Society of American Business Editors and Writers, received several awards during his career. In 1965, he won a Pulitzer Prize for a series of articles titled, “The Power Pull of the Dollar,” which analyzed the economic independence of Communist countries and their desire to resume trade with the West.

In addition, he won the Loeb Award four times, the Hancock Award three times, and the Overseas Press Club award for excellence in reporting from abroad on three occasions. Livingston was also the first SABEW president from 1964-1965.

Inquirer Executive Editor Eugene L. Roberts Jr. summed Livingston up in an AP obituary.

“He was one of the outstanding journalists of his time,” Roberts said.

Jeremy Osir is a native of Nairobi, Kenya, and an economics major and business journalism minor in the Class of 2013 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

John Lee

By Masa Watanabe

On Jan. 7, 2009, Nicholas Kristof published a post on his blog On the Ground about his former boss, who had passed away the day before.

Within a matter of 24 hours, 17 people had left comments, thanking the late New York Times editor for his superior leadership and brilliance. By the end of the month, that number would rise to 40, all reasserting the great qualities of a mentor, a father, and a gentleman, John M. Lee.

Lee was born in June 28, 1930, in Walterboro, S.C. After graduating from Duke University, he spent four years in the Air Force and then went on to earn his master’s degree from Columbia University School of Journalism. Upon graduation, Lee worked as a reporter for The Richmond News Leader in Virginia. In 1957, he became the business editor, but he would only hold onto that position for four years as he moved to The New York Times in 1961.

Lee worked for The Times until retirement in 2001. During the 40 years at the New York newspaper, Lee would rebuild the foundations of the business section, becoming a pioneer in a daily, standalone business section for mass market newspapers, and gather an abundance of loyal, young mentees, many of whom would become first-class journalists.

Lee began his career at The Times’ Canada bureau. He then served in two other foreign bureaus, London then Tokyo, until his eventual return to the United States in 1972. While working abroad, Lee became one of the two first Western reporters to visit North Korea since the end of the Korean War.

While his work in the foreign bureaus is nothing short of impressive, it was his accomplishments in New York that set him apart from the crowd. He returned to the United States to become assistant business editor. He was appointed business editor in 1976 and remained so until 1985. During his nine-year leadership, the newspaper created the Business Day section and remodeled the Sunday business section.

“The Times’s business section reoriented itself, focusing less on news of individual companies and more on the overlapping and interactive interests of businesses, economists, consumers and government,” Bruce Weber of The Times said in Lee’s obituary.

As part of the changes he would make to The Times business section, Lee hired a plethora of young reporters, including two Pulitzer Prize winners, a chief Washington correspondent, a national editor for Vanity Fair and many longtime employees of The Times.

“What he saw in me I will never know. By any standard I was under-qualified to work at The Times. But he took a chance on me, as he did on a whole generation of young reporters … all of whom went on to illustrious careers at The Times and beyond,” said Richard Stevenson, one of several young reporters to be hired by Lee. “Whatever success I’ve had, I owe to his willingness to make me a Times man.”

Along with Stevenson, many of Lee’s employees felt an uncanny loyalty to the business editor.

“Loyalty can’t be bought, assigned, ordered or demanded,” said Rex Seline, former assistant business editor when Lee was business editor. “You don’t get it by rank, stature, standing or position. Loyalty is earned — and conveyed.”

Lee established an army of loyal journalists, all eager to learn from their teacher, mentor and boss. While the content of his lessons were inspiring, it seems many were awestruck by the manner in which Lee presented his opinions and edits.

David Sanger says he still keeps some of the Post-it notes that Lee left him. Seline remembers a story about Todd Purdum who as a young reporter was approached by Lee to suggest that a paragraph at the end of the story should be moved up.

“You have no idea how hard it is to be on top of everything,” Seline said, “when you are business editor of The New York Times and have 90 people working for you. Yet John went to one of the youngest reporters there and not only offered praise but said, ‘I read it all the way through and down here we could have done this and made it better.’ That’s just a very powerful motivating tool.”

For many, Lee was a journalism mentor. For Seline, he was his management mentor. Seline later went on to become the executive business editor at the Miami Herald and managing editor at Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

“John was this proper New York Times editor…. In the journalism world, people get promoted because they’re great journalists, not necessarily great managers. Well, John was both, and that was very rare.”

Seline remembers one of the most inspiring lessons to be the lunch he had with his boss, expecting a promotion. But Lee asked a question that would resonate with him throughout the rest of his career.

“He asked me this. ‘If I were to put you in that position, in two years from now, what would they say about that single era of that job when you are ready to move onto the next job?’” said Seline. “It’s not just about being in position for the next step. It’s about bringing something to the table at the next step.”

People may remember Lee for building the foundations of Business Day. They may remember him for building the foundations of their careers. They may even remember him for always adding “and all that, too,” to the end of his sentences.

People may not agree on what Lee will most famously be remembered for, but they will agree on who he was.

He was a Southern gentleman with a New York edge. His humor was witty and clever, advice was deep and personal, eye for talent was unfathomable, and all that, too. His presence in the newsroom wasn’t just as an editor, a leader or a teacher; he was all of them and that’s what he will be remembered for.

Masa Watanabe is from Charlotte, N.C., and business journalism major in the Class of 2014 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He will be interning at Bloomberg News in Tokyo this summer.