Yesterday, I visited the NeoCon 2013 trade show in Chicago. It’s an exposition of office furniture manufacturers, and there were a ton of gorgeous fabrics, clever furniture styles, and basic equipment on display. I was looking for story ideas, potential sources, and, well, just to see what I could see. (I love going to trade… [Read More]
Blog
Category: Financial writing
Some thoughts on advertising and the future of publishing
Back in the olden days, I covered health care services at an investment bank that was quickly developing a specialty in the Internet. The talk then was that the Internet would revolutionize advertising because of the tight targeting and tracking capabilities. Advertisers would read their ideal customers, who would click on an ad to buy… [Read More]
The Onion A.V. Club’s New Money Column
The lovely and talented Nathan Rabin has started a new column on the Onion’s A.V. Club called Money Matters, in which he interviews different creative people about art and commerce, financial failure and professional failure. It’s really interesting. Bankrate.com has a similar feature, Celebrity Money, that looks at different ways that different stars make and spend… [Read More]
Why I Love the Olympics
I am an Olympics junkie, I admit. I’m thrilled that it won’t be in Chicago, and I think that the IOC’s demands on cities are unreasonable and unfair. I also love the pageantry, the heartwarming human drama, and the hard work of obscure athletes in obscure sports. As I writer, I love something else: the… [Read More]
Paying for College: Laura Laing and I Take on Good Debt, Bad Debt, and Student Loans
Laura Laing (left) is the author of Math for Grownups (Adams Media, 2011). She has also been writing about college costs recently, and she and I have put together this joint post Economists recognize that debt can be good. It smoothes out consumption over a lifecycle, they say; if most people had to save up… [Read More]
