Newsrooms tend to be less diverse than other industries—and nowhere is that lack of diversity more evident than on the business and finance desks of media companies. Stacy-Marie Ishmael, the managing editor for Crypto at Bloomberg, counseled Widening the Pipeline fellows about how lived experience can provide much needed perspective and elevated voices in finance journalism. [Transcript | Video]

5 takeaways

➀ Wealth looks different from the other end. As a student at the London School of Economics, Ishmael matched her peers in intellect. “I got to go to LSE because I won a scholarship, which essentially meant being extremely nerdy for seven straight years and beating a bunch of other people in high school on lots of tests.” But she was on a fixed stipend that covered most but not all her expenses. “I waited anxiously every quarter for my stipend check to be deposited, so I could figure out if I was going to buy food or books or pick another thing that was not compatible with all the above. And I was surrounded for the first time by people whose parents bought them apartments, and who took cabs to class, and who seemed to be on a path to become investment bankers from the day they walked through the doors of what we call the old building. While I was like, ‘what is an investment banker?’ “

That’s when Ishmael started reading two newspapers: The Financial Times and the Guardian. “The front page of the FT would be, ‘Marks & Spencer share price rises 20 Pence,’ or whatever the thing is. Marks & Spencer being at the time being one of the largest retailers in the UK. And the front page of The Guardian might be something like, ‘Marks & Spencer’s employees concerned about cost of living.’ And so there was just a very different perspective on the types of stories that were covered and the types of angles that made it to the front pages.”

➁ Journalism gives credence to an existing perspective; it does not create its own perspective. “There’s a phrasing that people use about journalism, that I really, really dislike, which is that we give voice to the voiceless,” Ishmael said. “And the reason that I really dislike it is…No, we don’t do it. We elevate voices.” Journalists should consider whose perspectives they include in stories and whose they might be leaving out. She said when she interviewed for the Financial Times, she criticized its coverage of her home in the Caribbean. She realized for the Financial Times’s audience, “the Caribbean was a tourism destination, and they were interested in the hurricanes and the beaches and the whatever fancy hotels being built,” not the details of Caribbean financial markets.

➂ Business journalism applies to most beats. “Business journalism is just telling stories about how the world works through a financial and economic lens,” Ishmael said. “And you can do that no matter what your beat is.” Following where money flows applies to most industries and broadly affects the public. Insurance, donations and lobbying are all fertile realms for business reporting.

“If you care about something, if there’s anything in the world that you are interested in, there is a monetization angle to that thing most often,” Ishmael said.

➃ Perspective is key. Consider who makes not only the financial decisions in stories, but also the decisions on what is published. “That sense of perspective is often implicit in the choices that we make about what we cover, but also what doesn’t get covered,” Ishmael said. She said when reading The Financial Times and The Guardian side-by-side, the two publications would publish stories on the same event, focusing on opposite groups. “You could not pick two more opposite media organizations to inform your daily media diet,” she said. Journalists should find angles to apply stories they care about to the desires of their newsrooms and audiences. “It is always important when you’re approaching anything, to frame it in ways that make sense to the existing editorial priorities of your newsroom,” Ishmael said.

➄ Finance is political, “if you’re big enough.” Governments take interest in financial and economic policy because they affect people’s livelihoods. The 2008 financial crisis illustrated the importance of financial failsafes. “In the aftermath of 2008, one of the things the U.S government got very good at was making sure the banks don’t fail,” Ishmael said. The U.S. government now ensures it can compensate people if that happens. “Not having bank failures is kind of a key policy thing.”

The Widening the Pipeline Fellowship is sponsored by the Evelyn Y. Davis Foundation, Bayer, J&J, Twitter and Lenovo. NPF is solely responsible for the content.