Larry Birger

By Gail DeGeorge

Respected by his peers and revered by younger journalists who worked with him, cigar-chomping Larry Birger was a pioneer in business journalism.

Passionate about the importance of covering the local business community, Birger launched Business Monday at The Miami Herald in July 1980, creating a publication whose format was copied by dozens of newspapers across the country.

He had first approached the management of The Miami News, where he had worked 19 years and was the business editor, with the idea of a separate, magazine-style publication focused on local business coverage. When the News rejected the proposal, he went to competitor Knight-Ridder, which backed it.

“He was a guy who wasn’t afraid to pound his fist on the table with the higher-ups to devote more resources to local business coverage,’’ said David Satterfield, who worked as a reporter at the Herald’s business section for Birger and later became business editor. “He was a very strong proponent of local business coverage.”

Not one to sit at a desk and make phone calls, Birger emphasized the importance of getting out of the office and meeting people personally to learn about the business community, said Satterfield,  who later became managing editor of the San Jose Mercury News and is now a founding member of San Francisco public relations firm  GF Bunting.

“He  had a tremendous institutional memory as well as faith in the business community in South Florida,”  remembers David Lyons, who worked as a reporter at the Herald for Birger. “The standing rule of Business Monday was that it always had to have staff-written pieces based on his firm belief that community business news was at the forefront of everything we should be doing,” said Lyons, now executive editor of the Daily Business Review in Miami.  Birger also did a public radio show, South Florida Business Focus.

Birger was also instrumental in the formation of the Society of American Business Editors and Writers,  remembers Myron Kandel, founding financial editor of CNN.   Birger was one of the early members and served as SABEW president in 1977, receiving the Distinguished Achievement Award in 1995. “He was one of the great pioneers of business journalism,” Kandel said.

“It was a big deal for him when he served as president,” remembers his son, Steve.  “He was very honored.  Every year he would go to the convention.  He got very excited to see fellow business reporters.  He took great pride in his job and honored the men and women who also did a great job.”

Ethics were extremely important to him, said Steve Birger. “The main thing about my dad was that he was really honorable. He was always so worried about taking anything or doing anything that people would say was because of his position. With the power he had, he could have gotten a lot of stuff for free but it never crossed his mind – to the point of fanaticism.”

Born in Montclair, N.J.,  Larry Birger was drafted the Army in World War II, becoming editor of his battalion newspaper in Europe. After the war, he moved to Miami with his family and graduated from the University of Miami in 1949 with a bachelor’s degree in journalism.

He earned a master’s degree from Northwestern University in 1950, and was drafted into the Korean War. He was a copy editor for Stars and Stripes in Tokyo, returning to Miami where he joined the Miami News, whose great rival was the Herald. When the News management turned down his proposal for a weekly business publication, he went to the Herald.

In reaction, the Miami News recruited Merwin Sigale, then with “Nightly Business Report,” to start a rival publication, publishing a Money section on Saturday, two days before the launch of Business Monday.  “Larry was proud of his publication and that it was entirely staff written,” Sigale remembers. “It was a proud moment for him when Business Monday reached 96 pages.”

Sigale knew Birger from SABEW conventions and as a keen competitor. “He was tenacious,” said Sigale, now a journalism professor at MiamiDade College.  “He was savvy about business and well-respected in the South Florida business community.”

With his trademark cigars and sometimes gruff manner, Birger was emblematic of an earlier time in journalism. Satterfield remembers when Birger was told he could no longer smoke in the newsroom. “Larry was crestfallen,” he said. “He’d start a cigar in the morning, leave it in his car, then smoke it at lunchtime and do the same drill on the way home.’’

His characteristic growl masked a great sense of humor and keen interest in boosting the careers of younger journalists who worked with him. “He strengthened the love of a great scoop,” Satterfield said. “Larry was absolutely a mentor in taking a young reporter like I was and introducing me to some of the leaders in the business community. He took a bunch of us under his wing,” he said. “Larry was a really likable guy.”

That mentoring aspect of his personality surprised Bruce Rubin after Birger became a partner in his public relations firm in 1994.  Rubin remembers young associates at the firm, renamed firm Rubin, Barnett and Birger, now RBB, many of whom had never worked at newspapers,  spending sessions with Birger on Friday mornings in the conference room.  “You could have blown me over with a feather how the young kids and Larry liked each other. Instead of Larry being impatient, he’d spend time with them on how to find the right angle.”

Shortly after being diagnosed with cancer, Birger died Dec. 18, 1998 at age 71. The conference room at RBB still bears his name and a scholarship at the School of Business at the University of Miami was established in his honor. In 2000, he was recognized as a Business Luminary of the Century Award as one of the 100 most influential business journalists of the century.

Gail DeGeorge is a former SABEW president and former Miami Herald business editor. She is now an editor for Bloomberg News in Washington, D.C.

Lewis Young

By Francie Mangan

Similar to the way his 1970s Texas Instrument home computer was plugged into the electrical circuit, Lewis H. Young was mechanically and passionately plugged into the world of business journalism and corporate America.

Young’s love for business in addition to his trend spotting abilities contributed to his significant impact on the world of business journalism during his 15-year tenure as editor-in-chief of Business Week magazine.

During his editorship, BusinessWeek became the first non-computer magazine to cover the emerging electronic industry. And Young made Business Week the most trusted business magazine in the nation. The magazine won four National Magazine Awards, including two for general excellence.

Young was born in Philadelphia in 1924. Prior to becoming the editor-in-chief of Business Week, he earned degrees in mechanical engineering and physics from Purdue University. Following college, he worked as a physicist for the Bettis Atomic Power division of the Westinghouse Electric Corp. He also earned his master’s degree in business administration from New York University and served as a first lieutenant in the Army Corps of Engineers.

However, Young found his true calling when he joined McGraw-Hill Publishing in 1951 as a reporter. After working a few jobs at McGraw-Hill as editor of Electronic Magazine, Young in 1969 became the editor-in-chief of Business Week.

“He took what used to be a trade magazine and turned it into the most successful business magazines that is still quoted even today,” said Shelia Cunningham, former corporate finance editor for Business Week.

As editor-in-chief, Young directed the magazine with a strong hand, always emphasizing original stories and aggressive in-depth reporting.

“He wanted stories that did not depend on the latest news in the last five or six days,” said Stephen Shepard, Young’s successor and editor-in-chief of BusinessWeek from 1984 to 2005. “He wanted the stories that made news themselves.”

Young would go to great lengths to ensure each issue of the magazine had original stories even if that meant getting into an argument with a colleague or killing a story.

In addition, Young also stressed the importance of clear and concise writing, rather than stylistic writing. Young believed that fancy writing masked holes in the reporting. In Shepard’s book, “Deadlines and Disruptions,” Young was quoted saying “one of the reasons you trust bankers is because they are sober and boring. If bankers wore Hawaiian shirts and long hair, you wouldn’t trust them.” His regard for good plain writing enabled the magazine to appeal to a broader audience of Americans interested in business.

Young also implemented “the forward spin,” which was the idea that each article needed to explain its importance and relevance to the future.

“I think one of his biggest strengths was that he was masterful at discerning trends in the business world,” said Judith Dobrzynski, former corporate strategies editor and correspondent for BusinessWeek. “We used to say that Lew could see around a corner, he was so good at seeing trends.”

Young anticipated two of the most influential trends of our time: the globalization of business and the technology revolution. His ability to understand the globalization of business and spotting the growth of the “tiger economies of Southeast Asia” led Young to expand Business Week’s international coverage to numerous countries around the world. He defined the globalization of business as not only selling products and services over seas, but also building factories and companies outside the United States.

Due to his prophetic outlook of the future, he also foresaw the technological revolution. He was the first to create a department called “Information Processing” that was devoted to covering the emerging field of technology in the Silicon Valley and around the country. In addition to his knack for electronics, Young was also enthralled by corporate strategies of small and large businesses.

Regardless of what area of business Young covered, he was always was prepared to take down any wrongdoers of business.

“One of the joys was watching Lew interact with corporate executives,” said Dobrzynski. “He was the best at scrutinizing them and asking them very tough questions. He did not refrain from asking any tough questions to them just because they were CEOs. Instead, he treated them as equals.”

In addition to his “moral streak ” in regard to the transgressions of business, Young also stood behind all of his reporters. Although he did not compliment his coworkers on a regular basis, Young valued hard work immensely.

His daughter Anne Young Albanese said the one thing that she learned from her father was to “always work hard and try your best.” Young not only relayed this message to his family and his colleagues, but he embodied it.

After retiring from Business Week in 1984, Young moved to Hong Kong to continue to his passion for business journalism. At the age of 73, Young was still working as the editorial director of Electronics News, a Cahners publication. His unending energy and zeal for business journalism ended on June 12, 1998, when he died from a heart attack.

Although Young was unable to witness the technological and global advancements in business today, he continues to serve as the foundation for the evolving world of business journalism.

Francie Mangan is a business journalism major in the Class of 2015 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

By Moni Oyedepo

As time progresses and American society matures, each generation develops fewer and fewer pioneers due to the hard work and sacrifices of those before them. Journalism is no exception as the field continues to evolve and publications continue to grow and die out.

The hard work of a true journalism pioneer, Robert Bleiberg, helped improve Barron’s and helped advance business journalism to what it is today.

Born in Brooklyn in 1924, Bleiberg spent a significant amount of his life in The Empire State. All of his formal education resided in the state as he graduated from Townsend Harris High School in New York City, received an undergraduate degree from Columbia University and a master of business administration from the New York University Graduate School of Business.

Before his career as a journalist blossomed, Bleiberg was drafted to serve his country. He was listening to the radio when he heard the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor; soon after he found himself as a rifleman in Okinawa, Japan. When he returned, he was a hardened veteran of World War II who contracted a debilitating disease in the Philippines.

After his time in the war, Bleiberg went to work for Pruden’s Digest of Investment and Banking Opinions as the associate editor in the late 1940s. This eventually led to his long tenure at Barron’s.

With an interest in Wall Street, Bleiberg began writing editorials for Barron’s in 1946 – in particular for the “Investment News and Views” segment. In 1954 he became the editor of the publication and held the title until 1981. Bleiberg acquired this position after his mentor, John Davenport, left Barron’s to be the assistant managing editor at Fortune magazine.

Fellow journalist James Grant remembers Bleiberg being nervous to take the position as he did not think he was qualified. As editor, he read everything that appeared in the weekly periodical, while still maintaining his weekly column. During his 27 years as editor, he helped the circulation grow fivefold to its peak of nearly 300,000 subscriptions.

Barron’s credits a lot of its current success to Bleiberg’s determination and drive. According to Grant, “Bleiberg wrote on stocks when the world could care less.” Bleiberg is credited with popularizing the technical analysis of stock trends, according to his mentee and friend, John Mauldin.

Former Dow Jones & Co. CEO Warren Phillips described Bleiberg as a conservative, vigorous writer who was in defense of the free market. So conservative were his ideals that many other journalists viewed him as a right winger. “A crusader of business journalism, Bob was committed to what he was doing. This was a calling for him,” stated Phillips fondly.

For example, when Bleiberg heard of President Kennedy’s assassination and the effects that it had on the nation, he prepared to cover the crisis that would ensue over the markets from the news. He became outraged when the New York Stock Exchange suspended trading because of Kennedy’s death.

He bellowed something along the lines of a crisis is exactly when the markets need to be able to operate most freely, reported Christopher Cox. Legend has it that Bleiberg tore his phone from the wall and threw it on the floor when the announcement was made. However, Alan Abelson, successor to Bleiberg at Barron’s, clarified that a phone was never thrown – but his fury was quite evident.

Bleiberg did not shy away from conflict or lawsuits – of which he faced many during his time. Abelson, managing editor and columnist during Bleiberg’s tenure as editor, wrote many pieces on the establishment and wrongdoings of companies that led to lawsuits against Barron’s.

The publication never settled a case – Bleiberg knew it was reporting the truth, and if it started the practice of settling, it would always find themselves in a lawsuit.

According to Phillips, a young Rudolf Giuliani — before becoming an attorney general he was a lawyer at Patterson, Belknap, Webb and Tyler — defended Bleiberg and Abelson against a company that complained that it lost money due to Abelson being in “cahoots” with short sellers and advancing column information to them. Giuliani ultimately won the case, and others like it, because there was no real basis to the case.

Standing at 6’1” and more than 200 pounds, Bleiberg was a formidable character. He helped Barron’s create a voice for the conservative side – as there was an overwhelming majority of liberal voices during his time.

Bleiberg stood for a true-blue free market and individual liberties. A consistent critic of the Federal Reserve and supporter of the gold standard, he was always an advocate of diminishing the federal government.

A victim of leukemia, Bleiberg died at the age of 73 in 1997 in New York Hospital.

Moni Oyedepo is a senior business journalism and political science double major who will be a communications consultant for Booz Allen Hamilton upon graduation in May 2013.