• Print
• comment
• Email
• RSS
• view as single page

Welcome to The Big Money. We’ve been working hard for months to build what we hope is a new kind of business Web site. Rarely in the recent past has the economy seemed such a pressing concern. With major Wall Street banks teetering on the edge of extinction, house prices collapsing, the mortgage market drying up, and real wages stagnating for years, it’s little wonder that the economy is by far the biggest issue for voters this election year.

Yet trying to follow the economy via traditional media can be confusing. In too many news stories, fundamental issues go unaddressed and fundamental questions go unasked. Lots of questionable assumptions—about the meaning of statistics, about the untrammeled virtues of free markets—inform not only the opinions offered but the way stories are shaped. In the tradition of our sibling site Slate, The Big Money seeks to puncture the assumptions, challenge conventional wisdom, and offer insights into the workings of business, economics, and finance that readers rarely find elsewhere. True to our name, we want to focus on all important aspects of money and economics without getting bogged down in arcane statistics or impenetrable jargon. Our goal is to extend the idea of business journalism into areas of our lives that aren’t always treated as business stories: the environment, technology, media, and the workplace. That’s why our two bloggers are covering Google and the food business. Yes, we want harried Wall Street traders to find wisdom here, but, equally, we hope people will enjoy The Big Money’s stories even if they haven’t traditionally thought of themselves as business-news readers.

In addition, our goal is to apply some of the unique, powerful capabilities of the Internet to the world of financial journalism. So in addition to timely analysis and provocative opinion, The Big Money offers one-of-a-kind Web tools designed to inform readers and bring them into the process. These include:

The Big Money’s Socially Responsible Investing Stock Screener. This exclusive tool allows readers to search through 500 major stocks and rank them according to a series of social responsibility criteria (such as environmental practices and labor and human rights policies). You can find the rankings for the companies in your portfolio—or maybe for the company where you work or shop. This constantly updated tool is a tremendous resource.

We Build Your Presentation. Multimedia presentations are a standard part of many people’s jobs, yet reliable data can be hard to find and time-consuming to chart. The Big Money wants to help: Describe a chart you’d like us to build, and if we think it’s interesting and feasible, we’ll build it and make it available for anyone to download.

YouTube BrandWatch. Online video is an increasingly powerful way for consumers to learn about corporations, a cornucopia of images and impressions—both positive and negative. Every week, The Big Money will feature a popular corporate-themed video from YouTube and ask readers to watch it and vote on how it affects the brand.

Video. Video about business topics can quickly become very boring. While we are launching with a modest video-production schedule, we will work very hard to keep it interesting, creative, and fun.

As you can see, we’re trying to accomplish a lot, but there are a few things some financial publications do that we won’t: We’re not promising to make you rich. We won’t tell you to buy this stock or sell that mutual fund. We’re not going to try to sell you an investment seminar or an exclusive, expensive insiders’ newsletter. We do hope you will find the site enlightening as well as entertaining—and that you’ll help us serve you better by telling us what you think. E-mail your feedback and ideas to tbmcontact@thebigmoney.com.