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Steve Gelsi is a Senior Reporter at MarketWatch
In this episode of Coffee with a Journalist, we sit down with Steve Gelsi, a Senior Reporter at MarketWatch, to explore how the landscape of financial journalism is evolving, especially as newsrooms adapt to the capabilities of AI. Steve shares insights into his work covering banking and, occasionally, the cannabis industry, while also delving into how he manages his inbox and navigates pitches.
Follow Steve on his socials below:
Linkedin: Steve Gelsi
X: @SteveGelsi
Author Page: Steve Gelsi
Click below to listen to the full conversation and read below for highlights from the interview:
Steve On What Type Of News MarketWatch Covers
[0:01:47.3] SG: MarketWatch is a financial news website, we’re here to try to explain and break things down for our readers and in an easy-to-understand way. We’re here to help them, help them save time, we’re here to help them understand the complexities of the financial markets, and then we try to do it as quickly as we can and as clearly as we can.
[0:02:05.0] BB: God bless, because yeah, it was hard yesterday, I’m sure, for you when China decided to have an AI that actually worked and all this crap. So, wow, we must never be born for you.
[0:02:13.5] SG: Yeah. Well, we’re – you know, just to kind of – a little bit more background, we’re sort of part of the Wall Street Journal family. So, you have the Wall Street Journal for sort of like the more elite people, Barons is a part of our family too, and then, MarketWatch. We’re sort of the widest reaching, most mainstream kind of focus, you know, in terms of the family here. We have our – try to – been developing our unique voice.
[0:02:35.7] BB: Okay. So, let’s talk about maybe your unique voice, just as you do, your tagline here it says it covers banking and cannabis as a senior reporter for MarketWatch. Are you still doing cannabis stuff? Because I see Tariffs, IPO, Wells Fargo, I mean, tell us more.
[0:02:48.0] SG: Not as much, you know, not as much, because the stock market has been kind of the stocks in the cannabis companies have been really weak, and I have been keeping an eye on it when there’s something really worthy. Well, right now on cannabis, we’re sort of waiting on what the Federal Government is going to do under Trump, you know, who the health and human services secretary is going to be, who the attorney general is going to be is going to shape the debate over cannabis.
They did name a DEA chief who is sort of anti-cannabis, but they – you know, but that’s kind of expected. That’s what DEA Chiefs do, you know? They’re cops, so yeah. So, I write about a lot of different things, there’s a lot of stuff going on right now, and yeah, the cannabis and the banking, I like to joke around saying that two industries that work on the edge of the law.
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How Steve Uses Press Releases As A Journalist
[0:06:03.6] SG: I literally will read through every single press release on PR Newswire between six AM and nine AM, and I’ll look through every single press release on Business Wire from six AM to nine AM to see if there’s anything that I want to cover. So, I do that. There is a correct way to find new –
[0:06:54.0] BB: I have never heard a journalist doing this and looking at the white – the literal wire.
[0:07:00.2] SG: Yeah.
[0:07:00.0] BB: Oh my God, Steve, this is breaking news, I’ve never heard this, but oh my God.
[0:07:04.2] SG: If I have time.
[0:07:05.2] BB: Okay, okay. This is good to clarify that. If you have time, okay.
[0:07:09.1] SG: Yeah, yeah, I will do that. I mean, you wouldn’t believe how slow it gets on Sundays, like, you know, right before Christmas or something, there’s almost nothing out there, but yeah.
[0:07:17.6] BB: Yeah. Okay, so someone that’s actually reviewing the wire, and which ones do you look?
[0:07:21.0] SG: I focus on Business Wire and PR Newswire.
[0:07:23.7] BB: Okay.
[0:07:23.9] SG: Those are the two big ones. I guess there’s some other ones, but I don’t pay attention to those.
[0:07:26.5] BB: Okay, okay, plus one for everybody looking at this.
[0:07:29.0] SG: There’s another one I would look in at too, occasionally too. I just don’t have a – a ready kind of knowledge of it, you know?
[0:07:34.6] BB: Yeah, wow, okay. This is so different from other things, this is amazing, okay, this is good.
Rapid Fire Pitching Preferences
[0:16:53.1] BB: Okay-okay-okay, good to know. Steve, we have a rapid-fire question set here.
[0:16:58.2] SG: Okay.
[0:16:58.7] BB: Are you ready?
[0:16:59.5] SG: How does that work? I have to answer quickly or?
[0:17:01.5] BB: No, however you best answer, we’ll see what happens.
[0:17:05.7] SG: You know, Paul McCartney, The Beatles says, he says, “First thought and best thought.” So, here we go.
[0:17:09.6] BB: Here we go. Video or phone interview?
[0:17:12.4] SG: I think video is good because you can turn it into a phone interview if you're just – if you just want to take some notes, you can just turn the camera off, so.
[0:17:18.9] BB: Yeah, there we go.
[0:17:19.2] SG: Yeah-yeah.
[0:17:20.7] BB: Bullet points or paragraphs?
[0:17:23.2] SG: I like both, you know? I like a little summary at the top and then maybe some bullet points below that.
[0:17:29.5] BB: Okay, this is good. Short or long pitches?
[0:17:32.5] SG: Short.
[0:17:32.9] BB: But how short? Four lines or less or?
[0:17:35.6] SG: You could do it in two sentences, you could do it in two sentences, I think.
[0:17:39.9] BB: You can.
[0:17:40.2] SG: I think you could.
[0:17:40.0] BB: Isn’t that true? Isn’t that true?
[0:17:42.0] SG: Yeah. I think you could do it in two sentence. When I pitch my editors, I’m not going to give more than, you know, a feature story, I would maybe give three or four sentences, but a story is one or two sentences because we can’t hold a thought in our brains for that long anymore, generally.
[0:17:55.4] BB: That’s totally true, yes.
[0:17:56.6] SG: We all have ADHD, I think.
[0:17:59.6] BB: Everyone’s had a low burn on that, to some extent, yes. Images attached or a Dropbox zip file?
[0:18:05.3] SG: I usually request images if I need them. We have a database of images that we usually use. But sometimes, if it’s really good, it would probably be better to have it in the, you know, in the file so you can just see it right away. Even those, I don't know if that’s more expensive for folks to do that than a zip file, I don't know.
[0:18:21.3] BB: Okay.
[0:18:22.1] SG: Well, the clients will pay for it, though.
[0:18:24.1] BB: Maybe. Email or DM of some sort?
[0:18:26.5] SG: I don’t like DMs, I’m not going to go with the DMs, I go with the emails.
[0:18:29.3] BB: Got you.
[0:18:29.3] SG: I mean, maybe some people. I mean, maybe a younger person who gets everything in text, but I don’t like getting text. I like having text in my phone for my personal stuff, so I don’t necessarily like it when I get it mixed in.
[0:18:41.4] BB: Makes sense. One follow-up or multiple?
[0:18:44.5] SG: One follow-up is good because I’m going to look at it. I’m going to look at it, and I don’t always respond, but I am going to look at it.
[0:18:51.3] BB: Yeah. Press release or media kit?
[0:18:54.2] SG: Press release, yeah. One page, two pages, media kit, from doing an auto review, then you need a whole, you know, media kit for that with all the photos of the interior or whatever, but yeah.
[0:19:04.6] BB: Is there a time you usually read pitches?
[0:19:11.2] SG: Generally, before nine AM.
[0:19:12.3] BB: Yeah. ET time, so good to know, yup.
[0:19:14.6] SG: We have a daily call at nine AM, so by that time, we usually have our – most of our ducks lined up.
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