The BER program considers late applications for Fall 2018 on a space-available basis. Please contact Professor Stephen D. Solomon for more information: sds1@nyu.edu
Do you want to write about some of the most important stories in the world today?
Entrepreneurs starting hot new companies?
The introduction of the iPhone 8?
Diminished opportunities for millennials?
The economic rise of China?
Britain’s exit from the European Union?
Come study in the Business and Economic Reporting program and start your career in the hottest area of journalism. Our graduates have gone on to jobs at places like The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Reuters, Forbes, Dow Jones Newswires, CNN, CNBC, and many other top news organizations.
Travel the World with BER
BER Students Report from New Hampshire Primary
We took our students to New Hampshire for three days to report on the Presidential primary…
Latest News
BER Alum Jay Yarow Awarded Journalist of the Year
BER Alum Jay Yarow, executive editor at CNBC’s digital operations, is Talking Biz News’ Business Journalist of the Year.
NYU Business and Economic Reporting students win five of the six scholarship awards given in 2017 by the New York Financial Writers Association
The merit-based competition is open to any graduate or undergraduate student in the New York tri-state area who is interested in business journalism.
BER Alumna Mia Lamar—Gerald Loeb Award Winner and Pulitzer Prize Finalist
Mia Lamar, alumna of the Business and Economic Reporting program, has won the most prestigious award in business journalism as part of a Wall Street Journal team reporting on corruption in Malaysia.
BER Alumna Lingling Wei received a citation for best international article at the 2015 Overseas Press Club Awards
Ms. Wei is a reporter in the Beijing bureau of the Wall Street Journal
Cover the World’s Most Interesting Stories
Go into business journalism and write stories the whole world will read. And they will extend far beyond Wall Street coverage and daily business reporting.
- Interested in the nation’s ongoing economic problems? Cover them while a student in the BER program. Our students write and produce for The Local East Village, the joint New York Times and Carter Institute news website. Also, see our own student publication, The Recovery Times.
- That iPod or iPhone in your pocket? Obvious business story.
- Interested in new media and Hollywood? You’ll find endless stories to pursue in the entertainment industry, from the impact of digital technology on the movie business to the battle between copyright holders and video portals like YouTube.
- Fascinated by the personalities of the people in power? Why not profile Rupert Murdoch or Bill Gates — or be the first to report on a rising fashion guru or a Silicon Valley whiz kid who thinks she’s got the next MySpace.
- Concerned about global warming and environmental issues? Take an assignment on hybrid cars, visit companies that are going green, and analyze the struggle between business and government as they battle over grizzly bears, salmon runs and oil drilling in pristine nature preserves.
- Like to travel? Business news organizations send their writers on reporting trips all over the U.S. and abroad. Maybe you’ll report in China for a week, as one of our alums did a year out of school (he couldn’t speak the language, but that didn’t stop him from writing a cover story on his trip for Forbes magazine).
To be a great reporter, no matter what you end up covering, you have to be able to follow the money. And that’s what you will learn to do in the Business and Economic Reporting (BER) program at New York University.
Great Jobs Right out of School
Virtually all BER students have secured staff jobs at national business news organizations within a few months of graduating. Many of them started the program without any journalism experience. Starting salaries have ranged from the low $40’s to the mid-$70’s, compared to the $28,000* average starting pay for journalism graduates nationwide going into newspaper jobs. Where do our students get jobs? The Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones Newswires, Reuters, Bloomberg News, Forbes, Inc., TheStreet.com, Money, CNBC, and numerous others. Many of them secured foreign postings in places such as Beijing, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nepal, Vietnam, India, Singapore, Russia, and Canada.
Your Competitive Advantage
What do you have to offer when you graduate? What’s your competitive advantage when your resume hits the desk of a key editor? Thousands of journalism students are trained in general assignment reporting and there usually isn’t much to distinguish among them. In BER, however, students benefit from a unique interdisciplinary curriculum of both journalism courses and MBA courses at NYU’s prestigious Leonard N. Stern School of Business. The result: an education that sets you apart from your peers because you will have intellectual depth in a subject matter that is critical to news coverage today, whether on page one or the business section.
Mentoring Relationships in a Small Program
In BER, students don’t get lost among hundreds of others as happens at other schools. Instead, we have a 5:1 student-to-faculty ratio, with BER enrolling just twelve to fifteen students each fall. A faculty of two full-time professors and an internship director/career counselor work with the students throughout their sixteen months at NYU, resulting in close mentoring relationships. The BER program also has two visiting scholars who will help mentor students: Leigh Gallagher, assistant managing editor of Fortune magazine; and Bethany McLean, a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and co-author of Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron, and All the Devils are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis.
Other Reasons to Study in BER
- Curriculum: An innovative curriculum of seven journalism courses and six MBA courses provides students with both skills and intellectual depth.
- Internships: Students take a full-time job at a major news organization for ten weeks over the summer (not for one or two days a week during a regular semester, as at other schools). Many BER students have received job offers from their internship.
- Bylines: Students develop an extensive portfolio while in BER, pick up multimedia skills in web video and audio podcast, learn to blog and post their own stories on the BER webzine.
- Networking in New York City: Why not study in the business and financial capital of the country, where a quick subway ride leads you to reporting assignments as well as to job interviews and great internships at the top news organizations in the world? And BER has a regular speakers program that enables students to network with the top journalists in the field, including editors and reporters from The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Wired, Vanity Fair, Marketwatch, Reuters, TheStreet.com, and many others.
Upcoming Events
Check back soon for upcoming events!
Recent Published Work
How This CEO Got Caught Up In the Clinton Email Scandal
January 20th, 2017
Revolutionary Dissent: How the Founding Generation Created the Freedom of Speech
April 26th, 2016
Sky Rivals: Two Men. Two Planes. An Epic Race Around the World
January 28th, 2016
How Making A Movie Is Like Launching A Startup
October 30th, 2015
I went to journalism school, and you should too. Maybe.
March 12th, 2015
The Troll’s Lawyer
January 5th, 2015
GM’s hit and run: How a lawyer, mechanic, and engineer blew open the worst auto scandal in history
October 18th, 2014
Follow the blood money: Exposing the secret US banking operations that help fund suicide bombers
February 23rd, 2014
I challenged hackers to investigate me and what they found out is chilling
October 26th, 2013
Chinese Contactors Grapple With Risks of Working Globally
August 27th, 2013