Larissa Padden 00:06

Hello and welcome to Cogcast, Cognito’s podcast, where we talk to journalists and media pros on everything that’s happening in the world of media and PR. I’m Larissa Padden, your host and a former journalist turned PR professional.

On this episode, I spoke with Gary Siegel, Managing Editor at The Bond Buyer. Gary has been with The Bond Buyer since 1989. And on this episode, he discusses what it means to cover the same beat for over 35 years and the state of journalism today in this new media landscape. Please enjoy.

Hi, Gary. Thanks for joining us.

 

Gary Siegel 00:42

Oh, thank you for having me.

 

Larissa Padden 00:43

So I always like to start off by handing the mic over to the guest right away so that they can give us a little background on themselves, what they do at their publication, and tell us a little bit about The Bond Buyer.

 

Gary Siegel 00:55

So I’ve been with The Bond Buyer since 1989, and I started when the internet really wasn’t much of a thing. And so our website was very limited. And because I was on the web team from the very beginning, I’m the go-to guy now. I’ve been here so long and have done so many things that when anything needs to be done editorially, I’m the person they go to. So I edit, I’ve been doing live interviews, video interviews, I’ve done podcasts, I write articles occasionally, but my main job is editing and getting our print edition together.

 

So let me tell you a little bit about The Bond Buyer. The Bond Buyer is the only independent information resource serving the entire municipal finance community. Our comprehensive package of news, analysis, and data is unique in the industry, serving a complete spectrum of senior industry professionals through our website, newsletters, and daily print edition. We reach more than 75,000 municipal finance professionals, issuers, government officials, investors, all the players on the deal team. The Bond Buyer also offers in-depth education about cutting-edge public finance topics to executive and senior management decision makers.

 

So a little more about me. I started in journalism after taking one class in college in journalism. I was able to get a job at a weekly newspaper where they paid me per story I contributed. And the first two or three stories that I wrote for them, they rewrote completely. So I understand what it’s like to have your work edited.

 

And I was there till after college and then I got a job with Prentice Hall for a few years. I was working on their loose-leaf management products and that was in New Jersey, and I was living in Long Island. So after a couple years, I couldn’t deal with the commute anymore. And I got a job with a magazine in the city that’s no longer published, and that was a start-up, after a year, it went out of business. And then I found myself at The Bond Buyer, and I’ve been there ever since and it’s a happy ending to the story.

 

Larissa Padden 03:35

Yeah, that’s rare. That’s rare to be at the same publication for almost your entire career. Just out of curiosity, when you had your first articles rewritten, how well did you take it?

 

Gary Siegel 03:46

Well, it was a little… I don’t even know what the word is. It was a little bit of a shock because you had gone through one class in journalism and everything was good. I got great grades. And then you go into the real world, and they were happy with my reporting, they just didn’t like the way I wrote it for what they wanted. They wanted a feature story, and I wrote them more as news stories. So there was a little bit of a learning curve, but I took it well, I mean, a little bit hurt, but other than that, I got through it because I was there for a few years.

 

Larissa Padden 04:27

Yeah. I ask because when I was an editor, the struggle I always had with fresh out-of-school journalists is they fought me on every word change. And I had to remind myself that back when I was in school for journalism, I was devastated every time my articles got heavily edited. And then I feel like you get into the daily grind of being a seasoned reporter and you just don’t care anymore. Just change it as long as it gets published and the news gets out.

 

Gary Siegel 04:52

Well, it’s funny because there are some reporters who’ve been reporting for years who will fight you over every word you change and others that will accept the criticism – Well, not really criticism, the improvement that I hope I’m making to their articles.

 

Larissa Padden 05:11

Yeah. It is very personality driven and journalists are known to be a stubborn sort. That’s why they’re in the industry they’re in.

 

I wanted to step back and talk about you joining as the web editor. I saw that your title was online, you were the online editor when you joined and this is back as you said in 1998, very different world multimedia wise than we’re living in now. So I wanted to explore a little bit with you what online journalism meant then versus what online journalism means now.

 

Gary Siegel 05:43

Well, actually it was 1989, not 1998.

 

Larissa Padden 05:47

I’m sorry. I mixed them up.

 

Gary Siegel 05:48

So even more in the age of dinosaurs. Back then we didn’t really have computers like we do today. We were using I guess you would call them word processors. And so whatever you did, you sent out and there was no way of correcting things. If something was sent out wrong, it was wrong, and then you’d have to send out something completely different stating that you made this mistake, and this is the correction.

 

So it’s terrific advancement through the years. Because now you see what you’re doing, you can see how it’s going to look and it’s just a whole different world.

 

Larissa Padden 06:37

Yeah. And I thought that was so interesting. You’ve seen the industry evolve in many ways over the years, I’m sure, how news is reported from a technical standpoint. But I wanted to get your thoughts on how you see the state of journalism today.

 

We see newsrooms shrinking, lots of layoffs. This is an industry that has always had waves and waves of layoffs as things have changed, but now there’s this big conversation around AI and diversifying the way that they report news through different mediums. So I just wanted to get your thoughts on what things are like today in the industry.

 

Gary Siegel 07:11

Well, for me, they’re pretty stable. The Bond Buyer has been around for about 200 years, and I hope it will be around for another 200 at least. I really don’t worry much about The Bond Buyer going out of business.

 

As for layoffs, yeah, unfortunately our staff is much smaller today than it was in the past. And AI is a part of it but not really, because AI is just coming in now and I think it’s more the evolution of technology that allowed us to work more efficiently and do more with less.

 

But I think the state of journalism overall is very sad today because there’s too much partisanship, where when I was in the beginning of my career, there was no way for anyone reading your story to tell if you were Democrat, Republican, and Independent. That was completely outside of your articles. And today, unfortunately, there’s too much editorializing in what should be news stories. And that’s why people don’t have the same trust in journalism as they used to.

 

And also, the fact that everyone who has a camera or a microphone thinks they’re a journalist and can cover whatever. And the need for immediate gratification whether on TV or on social media or on the internet, wherever it is, that’s made it more difficult – for lack of a better phrase – for real journalists working for real publications, because our job used to be to provide news but now it’s more we need to provide analysis and tell people what the news means.

 

Larissa Padden 09:15

Yeah. I feel the industry has really strayed from ‘just the facts, ma’am’, which used to be a great way to sum up journalism. But I did want to touch on that volatility a little bit, not so much from the bipartisan situation, but more from all this volatility that we see. We hear the phrase ‘we’re living in unprecedented times’ so often now, but we have had government shutdowns over budget before. We have seen market crashes and we’ve experienced inflation.

 

So for someone that has so consistently covered the same beat, the economy, for so long, are there nuanced differences from era to era in what we’re seeing today, from your perspective, or do we just have short memories?

 

Gary Siegel 09:59

Well, there are always nuanced differences. If you want, you could compare it to covering a sports team. The players may change over time. You’re still covering the same team. It’s still the same sport. But there are differences – different players, different opponents, different outcomes. And so while there have been shutdowns before and market crashes before and inflation before, you really can’t compare them. They’re different situations.

 

For 10 years, the Fed was trying to get the inflation rate up to 2% and now they can’t get it back down to 2% after COVID. So while the beat stays the same, there are obviously differences in what’s happening and different players. You have Powell now as the chair of the Fed, but that’s going to change shortly. And so you have different players and different problems and different situations. So it really has been quite interesting to follow all these things at different times and how they’re handled by different people and what the outcomes are.

 

Larissa Padden 11:19

Well, the other thing you mentioned was anyone with a camera can call themselves a journalist now, and we have seen media do good things and bad things to the industry.

 

One platform that we’re hearing pop up a lot more is Substack. We have a lot of clients that are very interested in it now. And it does afford journalists and writers the ability to create a brand for themselves and to hold themselves against their own checks and balances and kind of open up a new world.

 

But I just kind of wanted to get your thoughts on Substack and how the industry is evolving around these more independent writers with their own platforms, and if you think that’s going to grow into a bigger sphere in traditional media.

 

Gary Siegel 12:03

It’s hard to say. I really don’t know much about Substack, and I really don’t follow them closely. But again, that’s just another area where non-traditional sources are providing news. And I believe there is a place for all of these non-traditional storytellers. And if it works for some people, that’s great. But it’s never going to get rid of real journalism and publications that are devoted to certain topics, certain regions, and have been around for years and are trusted.

 

Larissa Padden 12:52

Yeah. I did want to ask, you’ve done it all, as you said, from editing to videos to more traditional print writing. Do you still get pitches? And if so, what catches your attention in a pitch?

 

 

Gary Siegel 13:09

Well, of course, I still get pitches. And I am open to receiving pitches. I’ve done this long enough, so that if I don’t know the person who is sending the pitch or the person whose pitch is being sent, I do a little investigation of them if I think what they’re saying has value.

 

There’s no way for you to know everyone in the world. And I have picked up extra sources in the past year from people who’ve made pitches to me. And after talking to them and investigating who they are and what they’re doing and what they do, I have added some of these to sources.

 

So there’s always opportunities to grow and to add sources. And you just have to be careful. You have to know who’s saying what and who’s talking to you and go from there.

 

Larissa Padden 14:05

Yeah. So as a PR person, I always like to ask, and you can be brutally honest if you want, how could PR be more helpful in that process of pitching and connecting you with sources?

 

Gary Siegel 14:18

Well, the most important thing is you have to do your homework as well. You have to know what I cover. And if you sent me a pitch that doesn’t involve the economy, I’m not interested. And chances are, I get so much email and have so much to do in a day that if you send me a pitch on something that’s not my area, I’m just going to delete it. I’m not even going to respond.

 

If it’s something close to my area that one of my colleagues cover, I will forward that to them. And maybe they will contact the PR person and speak to the person who’s being pitched. But the most important thing is try not to waste my time. Send me something that I’d be interested in.

 

Larissa Padden 15:12

Right. That is the number one answer I get for what goes wrong, not knowing who you’re pitching to or their subject matter. And I do think you deleting them – and I tell people this as a former journalist – is the best case scenario because the worst case scenario would either get shared around the newsroom if you’ve really missed the mark, or that reporter remembers you and may not even bother to open your pitch next time. And maybe that pitch is accurate. So it’s important to get it right the first time.

 

Gary Siegel 15:38

Correct.

 

Larissa Padden 15:39

Well, this is totally switching gears. But when I was looking at The Bond Buyer, you do offer sponsored content. And I’m always curious about what trends you’re seeing within sponsored content, meaning what are the priorities of the people buying sponsored content right now? What are they hoping to get out of it? If you’re seeing any commonalities in that.

 

Gary Siegel 15:59

I really don’t have much on that for you. I don’t deal with the sponsored content. That would be our publisher who would handle that. But I think generally what they would want from that is the publicity and to get an idea out to the municipal community. And so that’s what would be the objective of the sponsored content.

 

Larissa Padden 16:27

Okay. I just had a couple more questions. I know you’re very generous with your time. And when I was looking at your recent stories under your byline, it’s a lot of covering the FOMC, which over the last couple of years, obviously, with rates and inflation have been a huge topic of interest for our clients, for readers. How do you find inspiration in covering that so consistently, especially when so much of the headline is Fed holds on rates?

 

Gary Siegel 16:55

Well, the headline might be Fed holds on rates. But there are other aspects that are much more important. There are so much subtext there. Every word that Jerome Powell says is parsed by the entire municipal community. And it’s interesting to see. I have so many sources, and they have so many different opinions on little things he says. And the things that they get out of a word or two words is just amazing.

 

So it’s not the big picture. It’s looking at the little things, the little details in the words he says and the parsing of every word in the statement. That makes it very interesting.

 

Larissa Padden 17:47

Wow. Interesting. Well, this has been hugely helpful. But I do always like to end with a little, hopefully, fun question. And as a journalist who’s been in the industry for over 35 years, I just wanted to ask, what’s the most memorable scoop that you or your team has gotten?

 

Gary Siegel 18:04

Well, I’m not sure I’d call it a scoop. But the most memorable day was watching 9/11 unfold right outside my window.

 

Larissa Padden 18:13

Yeah. Oh, were you guys downtown?

 

Gary Siegel 18:04

Yeah, we were downtown. And our office building windows faced the World Trade Center. And I actually saw the second plane buzz our building.

 

Larissa Padden 18:27

Right. I wasn’t in New York then, but I do feel like that changed the physical landscape of the media in New York. So much of it was headquartered, especially financial news, down near Wall Street. And now it’s all in midtown. And it was a direct correlation to that.

 

Gary Siegel 18:45

Well, I think it took many years. But I think financial journalists stayed down there. I know we went back somewhere between two weeks and a month later. As soon as they said all was clear and all was safe, we were back in the building. So, yeah, I know now we’re in midtown. But I think the moving from financial district to midtown for most companies had to do more with COVID than 9/11.

 

Larissa Padden 19:19

Okay. Oh, wow. I was downtown when I first started my career as a journalist, and then I ended it in Times Square. So I also made the migration uptown.

 

Gary Siegel 19:27

Right. I guess most people did, because when you look at events, most events are held in midtown. So it’s easier and quicker to get there than to get there from the financial district.

 

Larissa Padden 19:42

Yeah. Interesting.

 

Well, this has been very interesting and hugely helpful. I always like to try and get some insights on how people are working, how they’re reporting, and how we can be helpful. So this has been great. Thank you.

 

Gary Siegel 19:54

My pleasure.