Professor Steve Schifferes

Director, Financial Journalism MA, and Marjorie Deane Professor of Financial Journalism

T: +44 (0)20 7040 3522

Overview

Professor Schifferes, Director of the Financial Journalism MA at City, has a wide-ranging background in business and finance journalism, both for television and online.

Professor Schifferes was economics correspondent for BBC News Online, co-ordinating coverage of the credit crunch, the Asian financial crisis, the Enron scandal, and the launch of the euro. He reported from the USA during the sub-prime crisis, the Iraq war and the Obama election and from Bangalore, Shanghai and Detroit on globalisation and its discontents.

Previously he was a television producer for programmes including On the Record and the Money Programme (BBC) and Weekend World (LWT) as well as a documentary film maker (Breadline Britain, Fortune, and The Making of Modern London for LWT).

Professor Schifferes has lectured around the world on the role of the media in the financial crisis, including Tsinghua and Fudan Universities (China); Mumbai University (India); Columbia and North Carolina (USA); Helsinki (Finland) and Cologne (Germany).

He has also done training and consultancy for the International Labour Organisation in Turin, for BBC News, and for the Oxford Internet Institute summer school at Harvard.

Professor Schifferes was a BBC Reuters Fellow at Oxford University in 2006, and a Knight-Bagehot Fellow at Columbia School of Journalism in 1993-4. He was educated at Harvard and Warwick Universities, where he was a National Merit Scholar and a National Science Foundation Fellow.

Research

Professor Schifferes' current research interests include:

the role and development of online business journalism
the history of financial journalism
the public understanding of the financial crisis.

He currently holds three major research grants, from the British Academy, City University London and the EU Integrated Project FP7 research fund. In the latter project, funded at 10m euros, he is leading the Department of Journalism team, working jointly with City's School of Informatics, in developing new tools for use by journalists in sampling and analysing social media, with ten partner institutions across Europe.

Publications

Books and book chapters

Forthcoming: Schifferes, S, and R. Roberts (2012 ), Soothsayers of Doom: the Media and Financial Crises, London: British Academy
Thurman, N., and Schifferes, S. (2012). 'The Paradox of Personalization: The Social and Reflexive Turn of Adaptive News' in Eugenia Siapera and Andreas Veglis (eds), The Handbook of Global Online Journalism. London: Wiley-Blackwell.
Schifferes, S (2011a), "The Financial Crisis and the UK Media," in Anya Schiffrin (ed), Bad News: How America's Business Press Missed the Story of the Century, New York: New Press
Schifferes, S (2011b), "It's the Economy, Stupid", in Sheila Gunn (ed), So You Want to be a Political Journalist, London: Biteback
Schifferes, S (2010), "How the BBC Called the Crisis," in Raymond Frenken (ed), Covering the Crisis: The Role of the Media in the Financial Crisis, Brussels: European Journalism Centrre
Schifferes, S (2006), Downloading Democracy: Election News on the Internet, Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, paper 271
Schifferes, S, (1986),"The Dilemma of British Housing Policy" in Critical Perspectives on Housing, Rachel Bratt, Chester Hartman and Ann Meyerson (eds), Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Journal articles and conference papers

Forthcoming: Schifferes, S (2012a) "The lessons of history: three paradigms for covering financial crises", Modern Language Association annual conference, Providence, Rhode Island, 30 March - 1 April
Forthcoming: Schifferes S (2012b) "Online News Consumption During the Financial Crisis," International Symposium on Online Journalism, Department of Journalism, University of Texas, Austin Texas, 20-21 April
Forthcoming: Schifferes, S (2012c), "The credibility of the financial press: a comparative analysis of public attitudes," IAMCR annual conference, Durban, South Africa, July 21-23
Schifferes, S and Coulter, S (2012), "Downloading Disaster: BBC News online and the Financial Crisis," Journalism: Theory, Practice, Criticism
Thurman, N., and Schifferes, S. (2011) 'The Future of Personalisation at News Websites: Lessons from a longitudinal study' paper presented to the Future of Journalism Conference, Cardiff University, Wales, September 8-9.
Schifferes, S (2010), "The Media and Financial Crisis: Some Lessons from the BBC", panel discussion at the journalism section of the International Communications Association annual conference, Singapore, June 23.
Schifferes, S, Ward, S and Lusodi, W (2009), "What's The Story: Online News Consumption in the 2005 General Election, Northern Lights 7(1) pp51-72
Schifferes, S (2007a), "Downloading Democracy: the audience for online election news," Internet 2.0 conference, Royal Holloway University, Egham Surrey, 1 April
Schifferes, S (2007b), "Downloading Democracy," paper for the European Political Science Association conference on social movements and the internet, Florence Italy 8 October
Schifferes, S (2006), and Ward, S, "The UK General Election and the Web: Audiences for Online News", Oxford Internet Institute, Politics and the Internet seminar series, Oxford, February
Schifferes, S (1994), "Trade Wars: The Next Round", Reuters Forum Journal, 2(2), pp 8-12.

Conferences and conference speeches

Schifferes, S, "Soothsayers of Doom: The Media and Financial Crises in Historical and Comparative Perspective", City University London, co-sponsored with the British Academy and the Centre for Contemporary British History, Kings College London, 12-13 December
Schifferes,S (2011a), "The Future of Financial Journalism After the Crisis", at Business As Usual: Wirtschaftjournalismus zwischen den Krisen, Business Journalism Day, organised by Koln Journalism School for Politics and Business, Koln, Germany, 30 March
Schifferes, S (2011b) The Future of Financial Journalism in An Age of Austerity," Inaugural Lecture, City University London, 8 February
Schifferes, S (2011c) "Bankers are Winning the Battle", at The Future of the City of London conference, City University London, London 14 February
Schifferes,S (2010), "The UK Media and the Financial Crisis," at Facing the Fracture: The Crisis and Economic Journalism, conference organised by the Roosevelt Institute and the School of Internationaland Public Affairs, Columbia University, New York, 7 April
Schifferes, S (2009a), "How the BBC Covered the Financial Crisis," Covering the Crisis, conference organised by the European Journalism Centre, Brussels, 18-19 October
Schifferes, S (2009b), "Saints or Sinners: The role of the media in the financial crisis," conference organised by the Department of Journalism, City University London and the BBC College of Journalism, London, November
Schifferes, S (2008), "Talking Ourselves Into Recession?" panel discussion at Policy Exchange, 1 September
Schifferes, S (moderator) (2002), "Immigration Backlash: Labor Migration in Crisis," The Reuters Forum, Columbia University, New York, 10 April.

Visiting Academic Lecture Series

Mumbai University, July- August 2011: "India and the Global Financial Crisis"

Sophia College for Women
KC College of Arts
HR College of Commerce and Economics
Lala Lajpatrai College of Commerce and Economics
UPG College of Management
RD National College of Arts and Commerce
SVKM Harkisan Mehta Foundation Institute of Journalism and Mass Communications
St Xavier's College
Jal Hind College

China lecture series, May-June 2010: "Covering the Global Financial Crisis: Dilemmas for Journalists"

Fudan University, Shanghai, 24 May
Financial Media Institute, Shanghai, 27 May
Renmin University, Beijing 1 June
Communications University of China, Beijing, 3 June
Tsinghua University, Beijing, 4 June

Other one-off guest lectures and seminars

Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, seminar on the media and the financial crisis (organised by John Lloyd), Oxford, 25 January 2011
London School of Economics, seminar on the Causes of the Crisis, organised by Polis (Charlie Beckett) and LSE, London November 2010
University of Helsinki, "The evolution of the global financial crisis," school of communications, Helsinki, Finland 6 December 2010
University of North Carolina, "Covering the financial crisis: US vs UK", School of Journalism and Mass Communications, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 14 April 2009
Keynote speaker, "Funding Research in an Age of Austerity", Research Into Ageing Annual Grant Holders conference, Birmingham, October 2008
Visiting lecturer, Oxford Internet Institute Summer Doctoral Programme, Harvard Law School, July 2007

Consultancy and training

BBC News, training days on the comprehensive spending review for regional journalists, October-December 2010
BBC News, improving the coverage of business news: improvements to the College of Journalism website (ongoing)
Donald Reynolds Center for Business Journalism, Arizona State University Walter Cronkite School of Journalism, Business professors seminar, Phoenix, Arizona, January 2010
International Labor Organisation, Globalisation and Labour Rights, training seminar and consultancy, ILO-ITC, Turin Italy, Aug 2007-2009.

Grants and awards

European Union, FP7, Integrating Project Award, ITC7, "Social Sensor: developing tools for integrating multi-media social search", 9.6m euros over three years for 10 institutions; City Award (jointly between Journalism and School of Informatics, Dr Ayse Goker): 934,000 euros.
City University London, pump priming grant, £10000, November 2010, for "Online coverage of the financial crisis"
British Academy, conference grant, £7500, for "Soothsayers of Doom: the media and financial crises in historical and comparative perspective, City University, December 2011
City University, learning development grant, £3000, for "Developing new ways of teaching numeracy to journalism students", 2011