Student Life - Academic Lecture Series: Business Writing - Queens Campus

March 31, 2009 12:15 PM - 1:15 PM

UC Storm Center, Queens Campus

Academic Lecture Series: When Business Writing Becomes High Drama: Keeping the Public Informed in Turbulent Times
Joe Nocera, New York Times Business Columnist

Joe Nocera became a business columnist for The New York Times in April 2005. Mr. Nocera also contributes to The New York Times Magazine as a business writer. In addition to his work at The Times, he serves as a regular business commentator for NPR’s “Weekend Edition Saturday” with Scott Simon.

Before joining The Times, Mr. Nocera spent 10 years at Fortune magazine, where he held a variety of positions, including contributing writer, editor-at-large and executive editor. His last position at Fortune was editorial director. Previously, he was the Profit Motive columnist at GQ until May 1995, and he wrote the same column for Esquire from 1988 to 1990. In the 1980s he served as a contributing editor at Newsweek, executive editor of New England Monthly and senior editor at Texas Monthly. From 1978 to 1980, he was an editor at The Washington Monthly.

Mr. Nocera’s Saturday column, Talking Business, ranges widely over the world of business, covering everything from Home Depot’s annual meeting to Boeing’s comeback to his offbeat musings about his broken iPod. Slate magazine says that his column “demystifies the world of business with original thinking, brainy reporting and the ability to see around corners.”

Mr. Nocera has won three Gerald Loeb awards and three John Hancock awards for excellence in business journalism. His book, “A Piece of the Action: How the Middle Class Joined the Money Class,” (Touchstone, 1995) won the New York Public Library's Helen B. Bernstein Award for Excellence in Journalism. He anchored the 1997 Frontline documentary “Betting on the Market,” which aired on PBS, and in 2003 edited “The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron” (Portfolio, 2003), a best-selling book by two Fortune senior writers. In 2007, Mr. Nocera was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for commentary. He was a winner in The Society of American Business Editors and Writers (SABEW) 2007 Best in Business Journalism Contest for his column in The New York Times.

Born in Providence, R.I., on May 6, 1952, Mr. Nocera earned a B.S. in journalism from Boston University in 1974. He has three children and lives in New York. For more information on Mr. Nocera and for links to his columns and articles, please click here.