Making the Leap in Business News

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 5, 2009 12:05 PM

NEW YORK -- When Liz Claman made the jump from local television to business news a decade ago, she had never heard of Warren Buffett.

Last month, the Fox Business Network anchor aired an hour-long special with the legendary investor, who for the first time allowed cameras to record him teaching at a business school.

"I'm not a BusinessWeek reporter who knows how to perfectly distill a balance sheet," Claman says. "But I know a good business story when I see it."

A year ago, the self-described "crazy girl" took what some might have deemed a crazy step, giving up her CNBC anchor job without a new gig lined up. Claman soon signed with Fox's fledgling business channel, which reaches a fraction of the audience, and is enjoying her underdog role as an anchor during a three-hour afternoon block.

Part of the reason she rejected CNBC's offer is her "California free-spirit personality," Claman says, but also because she carried the baggage of having started there as a temporary freelancer. She felt the same way earlier in her career when "I never got the nod to be the main babe, the 6-and-11 [p.m.] holy grail of local news."

Claman, 45, was stuck in the middle of the pecking order at CNBC, where Maria Bartiromo and Erin Burnett were getting the lion's share of the attention -- and appearances on NBC -- lavished on female anchors. At Fox she is an unquestioned star, albeit in a far smaller constellation, and her experience provides a glimpse of how Rupert Murdoch's year-old start-up is faring.

On a recent Monday, Claman -- a bright red dress offsetting her red hair, her leopard-print stilettos hidden under the anchor desk -- begins the 3 p.m. hour on a down note. "Ouch -- after five days of gains, stocks across the board are taking a massive beating today," she announces. The Dow is down 420 points.

Claman talks about Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who is minutes away from giving a speech, but the control room puts up a picture of someone else, then quickly takes it down.

"I want to call an audible," Claman announces, launching into a discussion of airline problems, starting with her Continental flight the day before, which included charges for luggage and food. She calls for a graphic on the airline industry, but her producers, struggling with balky equipment, can't provide one.

Such minor mishaps are not uncommon, and Claman keeps things moving with little effort.

"There are no anchors I've ever worked with who are more involved with their hours without being heavy-handed," says Executive Producer Andy Hoffman, another CNBC alumnus. "She over-prepares, she asks for more research. I say, 'Liz, it's a four-minute interview.' "

Both say that booking top corporate executives is harder when you're the new kid in town, and that some insist on first appearing on CNBC.

"I'm not going to sit here and say it's an easy sell," Claman admits. "Apple won't talk to me. I think that's extremely myopic."

Claman's "Countdown to the Closing Bell" is the network's highest-rated show during market hours; it averaged 38,000 viewers last month, a big jump from fewer than 20,000 in September. (The figures, obtained by The Washington Post, are not released by Nielsen because Fox Business is not a full-time client.) CNBC, which recently trimmed its staff amid company-wide cutbacks at NBC Universal, has averaged 453,000 daytime viewers since September. Fox Business reaches 45 million homes, mostly on digital channels, which is less than half the distribution of CNBC. And Sirius XM recently dropped the Fox channel from its satellite radio lineup.

As the financial crisis has intensified, Claman, like other journalists, has tried to strike the right tone. "I'm very mindful about being honest and truthful but not scaring people and not overstating things," she says. "This is a situation that needs no heightened hyperbole."

Claman says she avoids business jargon in an effort to appeal to the average investor, sometimes using what is dubbed the Fox Business Translator. "At CNBC it was a game of who can be the smartest, who can throw around the most alphabet soup -- CDSs, CDOs," she says.

Although she is an anchor, she constantly works the phones. In September, Claman disclosed that the Securities and Exchange Commission was about to crack down on market short-sellers; her report aired 40 minutes before the agency announced the move.

Claman has always been "a force of nature," says her oldest sister, Danielle Gelber, a senior vice president at Showtime. When Claman was about 12 and the family got its first video camera, Gelber says her sister "would pretend to be Barbara Walters, and we all had to pretend to be various celebrities and she would interview us. You can't make this stuff up."

Claman bounced around several colleges, from UCLA to the Sorbonne, and climbed the local-news ladder the hard way. After an entry-level job at KCBS in Los Angeles that included delivering newspapers to Paula Zahn, Claman worked at stations in Columbus, Ohio, Cleveland and Boston, picking up an Emmy along the way.

She admits she faced a steep learning curve in 1998 when she joined CNBC, immersing herself in Fortune, Forbes and the Wall Street Journal and trolling Yahoo Finance chat sites. Despite her inexperience, Claman called Buffett one day and he took the call, saying he had just been watching her on the air. Her soft-sell approach worked, and several interviews with the Berkshire Hathaway chairman followed.

"Too many reporters are so inauthentic," Claman says. "They look so greedy. They look so obnoxious: 'I need this to be exclusive!' I don't strong-arm anyone, ever."

When Claman got to Fox, she secured a rare joint interview with Buffett and Bill Gates, a board member of Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, and was able to get Gates's reaction to the news that Microsoft was abandoning its takeover bid for Yahoo. She seems to like corporate hotshots; her special on Buffett's teaching sideline last month was extremely friendly. Claman prides herself on eliciting personal details from CEOs, such as the fact that Jim Kelly, who once ran United Parcel Service, started out as a driver.

After a decade, she is getting some respect. A recent Vanity Fair article called Claman one of the top business anchors, distinguishing her from some other female financial correspondents, with "their short, tight skirts, low-cut blouses, and the way the Fox cameras focused on their legs and chests." Claman called that characterization unfair.

With a 7-year-old daughter and a 4-year-old son, Claman does her share of juggling at her New Jersey home. "We both have nutty schedules, but the kids come first no matter what," says her husband, Jeff Kepnes, a CNN senior producer. Claman recently turned down the chance to be on a panel with Neel Kashkari, the Treasury official in charge of the banking bailout, because she had a private school interview for her son.

Whatever her achievements, one critic is difficult to please. After Claman covered Barack Obama in Chicago on election night, her mother -- a London-trained theater actress -- wrote her: "You were wonderful . . . for the most part."

"I could be at the mouth of Osama bin Laden's cave and she would say, 'You talked with your hands; don't do that,' " Claman says.

Mystery Web Site

Greg Sargent, a liberal blogger at TalkingPointsMemo.com -- who has whacked The Washington Post on occasion -- kicked up a fuss in the blogosphere over the weekend by announcing that he's leaving to blog for . . . The Post.

Sargent relentlessly defended Hillary Clinton against what he called unfair coverage and attacked the right's "wingnut slime machine." One posting was titled "Washington Post Takes Cues From Drudge, Runs Awful Photo Of Hillary's Wrinkles." In a typical slap, the Weekly Standard's Michael Goldfarb, a former John McCain spokesman, wrote: "Sargent is an unrepentant Democratic partisan, which means he should fit in well with the staff at The Post, but also a top notch reporter."

But it turns out Sargent isn't moving to the paper's Web site, washingtonpost.com. Instead, he is joining a new site being launched by The Post Co., according to a person familiar with the site. That person, who asked not to be identified because no official announcement has been made, says Sargent is being tapped as a reporter to write a newsy blog that is not ideological, along with a variety of contributors.

The site, to be called WhoRunsGov, will focus in part on profiles of government decision-makers, the source said. It is expected to launch during inauguration week.

Precious Real Estate

The New York Times, which recently mortgaged its headquarters, must be in a tighter cash squeeze than anyone realized. Today's front page features a six-column color ad for CBS, stripped across the bottom, the first time in modern history that the paper has sold such prominent space.

Foreign Makeover

Foreign Policy relaunches on the Web today, and it looks very different than the sober, authoritative and slightly stuffy magazine of the past.

The Post Co. bought Foreign Policy in September, and the new editor, Susan Glasser, is recasting it as a daily online publication. The role marks a comeback for Glasser, who was a successful Outlook editor but was replaced last year as The Post's assistant managing editor for national news.

One of the biggest names on the new Web site is Tom Ricks, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "Fiasco," who took a buyout from the paper and will write a daily blog on military matters. Blogger Daniel Drezner will shift his blog on global economics to the revamped site. And ex-Clinton administration official David Rothkopf will focus on Washington power brokers. D.C. journalist Laura Rozen will head a reported blog on national security and foreign affairs. And there will be yet another blog devoted to all things Hillary.

In a classic Glasser touch, a team of conservatives will critique Obama's foreign policy from the right.

She's already got a nice piece up on the 10 worst predictions of 2008, leading off with:

" 'If [Hillary Clinton] gets a race against John Edwards and Barack Obama, she's going to be the nominee. Gore is the only threat to her, then . . . Barack Obama is not going to beat Hillary Clinton in a single Democratic primary. I'll predict that right now.' --William Kristol, Fox News Sunday, Dec. 17, 2006."

Post Editor Resigning

In more Post news, Phil Bennett announced this morning that he is stepping down as managing editor after being passed over for the top job, triggering speculation about who will replace him in the newsroom's No. 2 job. I've got the details here.

In other news . . . Bill Richardson withdraws before we all have a chance to wallow in the scandal? That seems rather unsporting. Why didn't this leak out earlier, before Andrea Mitchell caught wind of it soon before the official announcement?

Instead, it was handled in true No Drama Obama fashion.

Obama's choice for Commerce secretary "withdrew from consideration for that job on Sunday, saying a pending investigation into whether his administration gave lucrative contracts to a political donor would have "forced an untenable delay" in his confirmation," the New York Times says.

The announcement "was a setback for the president-elect, who has assembled his cabinet in near-record time. It raises questions about the thoroughness of Mr. Richardson's vetting, deprives the Obama administration of a prominent Hispanic -- Mr. Obama has, however, named two other Latinos, Representative Hilda L. Solis of California and Senator Ken Salazar of Colorado, to cabinet posts -- and leaves a hole in the new White House economics team at a critical juncture."

Jake Tapper: "Sources tell ABC News that officials on the Obama Transition Team feel that before he was formally offered the job of commerce secretary, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson was not forthcoming with them about the federal investigation that is looking into whether the governor steered a state contract towards a major financial contributor."

Also: "A source close to Richardson told Politico, 'There are too many unanswered questions and while he thinks the results of the grand jury will turn out in his favor, he doesn't want to distract attention from the administration.' A Senate aide told Politico there had been 'nervousness' within the Senate and more specifically the Senate Commerce Committee about the grand jury probe in recent weeks."

The person who's most bummed:

"Lt. Gov. Diane Denish had been preparing to succeed Richardson in the governor's office once his confirmation as commerce secretary came from the Senate," the Albuquerque Journal reports.

Tim Kaine may not have made much political sense as VP, but the WP among others reports:

"Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine will become chairman of the Democratic National Committee later this month, serving as the top political messenger for Barack Obama's administration even while finishing his final year in the governor's mansion, several sources said."

Catching up after some time off . . . and sometimes it just pays to skip the interim stories. Such as this AP piece:

"Sen. Bill Clinton? Sen. Mario Cuomo? Don't completely rule it out. The former president and the former New York governor are among several boldface names being touted as possible 'caretakers' for New York's Senate seat -- people who would serve until the 2010 elections but wouldn't be interested in running to keep the job."

Which led to this New York Post story:

"Gov. Paterson yesterday roundly rejected the idea of appointing a caretaker to fill Hillary Rodham Clinton's soon-to-be vacant Senate seat -- all but ruling out the prospect that an elder statesman, like former President Bill Clinton or ex-Gov. Mario Cuomo, could get the nod."

Never mind.

To the pile of Bush farewell pieces, add this one by National Review's Byron York:

"George W. Bush leaves office with a job-approval rating that once soared to historic highs, then fell slowly but steadily for five years before settling, in the last couple of years, into lows that no president has ever experienced for so long. The president's final Gallup approval rating of 2008 is 28 percent; a number like that means some core Republicans don't approve of Bush's performance, and even among the many in the GOP who still approve, there are a number who are ready to see the president go.

"Bush knows that. The White House staff knows it. But the president's political fortunes haven't affected the intense loyalty that those who know him best feel for him. The people who have worked with George W. Bush in the White House for many of these past eight years have seen a different man from the one reflected in so much negative press coverage. And as they prepare to leave on January 20, their feelings for him are, if anything, stronger than when they arrived."

Frank Rich, on the other hand, is less nostalgic about the man who's given him so much material:

"We like our failed presidents to be Shakespearean, or at least large enough to inspire Oscar-worthy performances from magnificent tragedians like Frank Langella. So here, too, George W. Bush has let us down. Even the banality of evil is too grandiose a concept for 43. He is not a memorable villain so much as a sometimes affable second banana whom Josh Brolin and Will Ferrell can nail without breaking a sweat . . .

"The joke was on us. Iraq burned, New Orleans flooded, and Bush remained oblivious to each and every pratfall on his watch. Americans essentially stopped listening to him after Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, but he still doesn't grasp the finality of their defection. Lately he's promised not to steal the spotlight from Barack Obama once he's in retirement -- as if he could do so by any act short of running naked through downtown Dallas. The latest CNN poll finds that only one-third of his fellow citizens want him to play a post-presidency role in public life."

Which nicely sets up this final item:

"Another President Bush?

"Perhaps so, says former president George H.W. Bush, who has already seen one son, George W., serve in the Oval Office. The nation's 41st president said yesterday that he would like to see a second son, Jeb, be president one day."

He hasn't exactly given us time to miss the Bush family.