On the podcast today, we’re joined by Carleton English, a reporter for Barron’s. Carleton covers financial markets and asset managers. Prior to Barron’s, she was a reporter for The Information, the New York Post, and TheStreet.
During the episode, Carleton gives a peek inside her tightly organized inbox, shares the history and perspective of Barron’s, talks about the ins and out of being a beat reporter, and more.
Click below to listen to the full conversation and read below for highlights from the interview:
[00:03:34] BB: I like it. I like it. Well, we could talk all about New York here. But that's not our point for our purposes on this little show. So, Carleton, what's your inbox like?
[00:03:44] CE: Well, today, it's great, because yesterday, I cleared it out. Yeah.
[00:03:49] BB: Oh! What does it mean?
[00:03:51] CE: What does it mean?
[00:03:51] CE: For me, inbox zero doesn't happen. But we use Gmail. So I get nervous when I have more than 50 in the inbox, because that's when you have to page through, and that's when things get lost.
[00:04:03] BB: Yes. Yes. Agreed.
“And then for ideas I really like, I keep a work in progress list, A WIP list, where I might just kind of copy and paste some of a pitch, or an introduction, or whatever. And just like, ‘Oh, yeah, do you want to follow up with that person later?’”
[00:04:04] CE: So yeah, my inbox is a great mess, because we end up on so many of these automatic distribution lists. So all of us are getting hundreds of emails a day. And in my case, 20% of them are maybe relevant to me, and even a smaller portion of those are actually actionable. So I always try. I don't always succeed, but I try to keep the inbox so that it's just like one Gmail page.
[00:04:29] BB: One Gmail page. I've never heard that before on the show. Just keep it to one Gmail page. Cool. Now with the pitches you receive, are you a mass deleter? Are you a filer? Do you have a whole system going on? What do you do?
[00:04:42] CE: Yeah. So I am a mass delete and unsubscriber if I can tell that it's coming from kind of, I guess, like a pitch form or it's things that aren't very relevant to me, like somehow I got on a list.
[00:04:54] BB: Oh, crap.
[00:04:54] CE: Yes. Right? But if it's something that ties to things that I cover, or things that I might cover, or things that I know a colleague is working on, I'll deal with those accordingly. I'm a terrible responder. I mean, I’m terrible at responding to every single pitch. But they do stay kind of archived or I kind of keep a note for myself, “Oh, yeah, that was an interesting idea. I can't do anything with that yet. But that's something I want to read into more or think about later.”
[00:05:51] BB: Mm-hmm. Okay, good to know. What's one of the best subject lines you've ever received, and why?
[00:06:01] CE: Yeah. So I don't have one that I can say like that comes to mind. I will admit, though, that sometimes like the subject lines for the things that I'm obviously never going to write about, but that are just like really clever, like how like every day is like National Hot Dog Day, or National Breakfast Sandwich Day or something like that?
[00:06:19] BB: I know. Cupcake icing day. Yeah.
[00:06:21] CE: I mean, the pitches tied to those days. They are not at all for my readership. Not things I'm going to write about. But there are some creative people who write those. I wish I could think of one off the top of my head. But I mean, there's so much fun with like the puns and the things that people write about there.
[00:06:36] BB: What’s a subject line where you’re like, “Damn! I got to open that.”
[00:06:39] CE: That has to open it and like actually refer to it. Yeah.
[00:06:42] BB: Yes. That you’re like, “And I'm writing it. And I responded right away. It was so good.” Or does that never happen?
[00:06:51] CE: I mean, it certainly happened. There’re people I respond to anyway. But those are honestly probably more boring and traditional ways. But they're just immediately relevant to me. So say that there's like an ongoing story, something like the Meme-Stock Mania that we saw in early January, where maybe I wrote one story, but obviously, there's going to be continued follow up on that. So someone who just really kind of addresses a point that I made in a story and then says, “You might want to look at,” is like, “Oh, okay, I need to look at what this person is saying.”
[00:14:43] BB: Okay. Wow. Okay. Going back to – Now, this is back to pitches, but I want to make sure we cover this because this seems to be increasingly a hot topic, exclusives versus embargoes. You mentioned on one of our video little snippets, which I encourage everyone to watch for some really little gems of wisdom there that you have an embargo. You say, “Hey, it's going to 8:00 AM tomorrow,” and you're like, “It's 4:00 PM right now. That's not very helpful.” So do you receive exclusives? Do you receive embargoes?
[00:15:14] CE: I definitely get pitched them a lot and I think all of us do because you can kind of tell by some of the emails that you get. But it's like, “This doesn't feel very personalized.” So to work on something like that, I'm open to that sort of thing if it's someone I've had a reporting relationship with before because there's trust there. It’s a source is saying like, “Look, this deal’s going to be announced tomorrow,” and you've talked to that source before, and you understand what they cover. But going in cold with a new source on an exclusive or embargo on a tight timeline, I just – It makes me a little bit nervous, right, because there's not that trust relationship. Or it could be a new topic, and that can always be difficult to work with. So, yeah, it really depends. But it's generally something I'm more open with, if there's been a longer reporting source relationship there.
[00:16:09] BB: Got it. Okay. Then is there ever a time where you're like, “Someone sent me an exclusive or someone sent me in this embargo,” and you're like, “Absolutely, no. I do not –” Like is there just a no, no to do for either one of those for you?
“So to work on something like that, I'm open to that sort of thing if it's someone I've had a reporting relationship with before because there's trust there.”
[00:16:23] CE: Yeah. For me, I mean, if it's your first time contacting me, and you're offering me an embargo, again, it comes down to that sort of trust. Then also, the tight timelines always make me nervous. I mean, we work in news. Things happen very quickly, so I'm aware of that. But it's funny because before I was a reporter, I worked as a credit analyst, and one of the kind of ways for sussing out fraud was someone who's really anxious to get a deal done quickly. That’s just something that I kind of took with me in journalism, where it's like there might be more to the story than what's being pitched. That trust needs to be there that I can fully vet it and talk to a variety of sources and tell the complete story. If it's not there, I get too nervous to do it.
[00:07:24] BB: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Okay, I like that. And for people who maybe don't know, Barron's overall, maybe you're not in the financial wealth management space or anything. Could you give us an overview, Carleton, on just what is Barron's all-encompassing for just everybody? Honestly, I should have started off with that instead of going right into your inbox. But I was excited and also happy about New York. So let's go back to that real quick.
[00:07:47] CE: Sure. So Barron's just celebrated its 100th year. I know, it's wild.
“And we kind of cater towards the individual investor. Our coverage includes a lot of stock picking. Our coverage also includes just kind of more in depth analysis that can help people make their own investment decisions.”
[00:07:50] BB: Gosh! Freaking amazing.
[00:07:52] CE: So it's an amazing financial publication. Sister publication to The Wall Street Journal. And we kind of cater towards the individual investor. Our coverage includes a lot of stock picking. Our coverage also includes just kind of more in depth analysis that can help people make their own investment decisions. Kind of explaining like a behind the scenes of what's going on with things in the market, whether it's what the Fed is doing with interest rates, what the Coronavirus pandemic means for the economy and investors, and how to react to that? So that's our readership base. And then we're also doing a ton of things in video. I actually do have a YouTube channel where I talk about stock picking and where I recently did meme stock trading. So we're a multimedia. I mean, we're everywhere.
[00:08:39] BB: Yes. So then, given that wide array in investor education, in the market. Now, some of that, of course, is driven by the pure news cycle. So something comes out about stock X, and you're going to have to talk about stock X. But are there any stories that you get to contemplate and kind of come up with? And if so, what's the creative process for that? And also, does any of it ever come from a pitch?
[00:09:06] CE: Yes. So probably one that I had a lot of fun writing. So with investing, it's always like, “Okay, well, if everyone's thinking this, what about that?” of like what aren't people saying? So if you go back to 2022, onset of the Coronavirus pandemic, the Federal Reserve lowered interest rates. Just a scary time for banks, right? Because they don't make as much money when rates are low. And then also, I think everyone had this kind of memory of, “Wait. The last time the economy was in crisis, that was the banking crisis of 2008. So banks must be terrible.”
And definitely they were scary times. And all stock sold off, and especially banks. But as we started – I don't want to jinx myself of saying come out of it, because we're still doing this stuff remotely. But as we started to get more of a handle on the virus and the impact on the economy, it’s like maybe things are going to rebound faster than everyone thought. And this was, I guess, around July of 2020, where I started to realize, “Okay, all these banks are setting aside these billions of reserves. But strangely, the market is recovering and people are spending money to the extent that they can.
“So that’s why I do think beat recording is really important. There's a challenge to it, where you limit yourself too much. But if you kind of have like a broader theme of things that you look at – I mean, I write mostly about things, but that means I'm keeping my eye on all financials.”
For banks, like all these reserves that they're setting aside expecting people to default on their loans, that might not happen. And those reserves will get to be released. So that was a really fun one that I got to work on. And it was kind of getting ahead of what I think a lot of the analyst community was saying where it was one where I was calling either bank investors or bank analysts, talking to a few executives at the big banks, and just kind of getting that sense of like, “Alright, what are you seeing here? Is this possible?” And for some of these sources, it was like, “Oh, yeah, that actually does make sense. So that started to become the consensus view. And that was a fun one to work on.
[00:10:57] BB: Oh, sounds like you like kind of like getting in to something. Digging around.
[00:11:02] CE: Absolutely.
[00:11:03] BB: Seeing what's really going on. That's fun.
[00:11:04] CE: When you have time to do it, it's the best feeling as a reporter.
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Carelton relies heavily on trust when it comes to pitching. That means she knows you and can trust you’re providing rich information to her that her readers find valuable.
Learn more about Carleton’s pitching preferences and more by watching her journalist spotlight videos.
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