An Unfiltered Look at Public Finance, Media, Politics and Sports
Business Biography
Date Published: November 28, 2022
Get unfiltered broadcasting and career advice with this biting and provocative firsthand account of working in media.
Paul Burton has 45 years under his belt, including 10 as a regional editor for New York City-based trade publication, Bond Buyer, and he’s survived—and thrived—to tell the tale. From his humble beginnings to his rise in the industry, Burton covers a lot of ground in his stories, from dealing with people in media and finance to workers in tech and personnel. He not only gives honest insights about financial news but also reveals the controversial internal politics of journalism and publishing that run rampant.
Burton’s wisdom on topics such as covering hot-button issues and fighting against negative stereotypes proves that a career in media is just like the news itself: eclectic, bold, and unexpected.
Take part in the drama and missteps that are a part of success in one of the best journalistic memoirs about business on the market.
Interview with Paul Burton
Introduce yourself and tell me about what you do.
I am a retired journalist and author of two books, the most recent, “Fiascoes and Foibles: An Unfiltered Look at Public Finance, Media, Politics and Sports” (Elite Authors). It came out last Nov. 28. My earlier book was “Tales from the Newsrooms: An Offbeat Look” (Create Space), in 2011.
“Fiascoes,” a collection of anecdotal essays, reflects largely on my coverage of U.S. public finance over the last 10 years of my career – as a regional editor for a business publication in the shadow of Wall Street – against the backdrop of my 45 years in media. They capture drama, missteps and intrigue I encountered with color and biting, irreverent humor. Plenty of attitude. Topics range from transit/infrastructure to media and politics, and also include broadcasting and podcast dynamics, the alarming clout of tech bureaucracies, the abject failure of open-plan office layouts in the workplace and how my early days in sports journalism shaped and benefited my career.
Unique to my perspective is my blue-collar background. The media employs precious few people from working backgrounds these days. I didn’t go to Harvard, Duke or Stanford and prance right into the New York Times or Wall Street Journal. I was the son of a bartender who navigated a winding road, often working for small-to-medium media outlets who punched above their weight class, and frequently landed a rewarding knockout punch.
Tell me more about your journey as an author, including the writing processes?
“Tales” was a fun read, but I also saw room for improvement in my next book. “Fiascoes” has much more meat on the bones.
Much of what I covered throughout the U.S. Northeast for trade publication The Bond Buyer had me saying to myself, “You can’t make this stuff up.” That morphed into “Damn, I should write another book.”
Foundationally, I spent about three years planning, saving articles I had written and recycling snippets throughout the book. I researched and double-checked every topic along the way, and monitored for breaking developments to update as needed. I interviewed selected media colleagues, with some cross-marketing in mind. You have to “sell the sizzle.” The bite you see is appealing and multiple readers have told me they laughed out loud while reading the book.
Challenges included determining which topics merited stand-alone chapters and which ones I should merely “bake in” to other chapters. In the end I went with fewer chapters to achieve quicker turnaround without affecting quality.
Tell me about your book (that you want to talk about)
Someone who bought my book recently asked: “The book title says public finance. Will I be able to understand it?” The answer is a resounding yes. I wrote it in chatty, straightforward English. The tone is blunt.
Certainly, newsroom veterans, college communications and business students, and public finance veterans will find this book enlightening. But so will anyone wanting to know more about these topics.
“Fiascoes” includes a dedicated chapter about New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the politics behind its funding and $50 billion of debt. The political maneuvering surrounding this state-run agency and the city it serves resonates well beyond New York.
Other chapters dwell on such scandals as the debt crisis in Harrisburg, Pa., that nearly left Pennsylvania’s capital city bankrupt; and the farce surrounding Rhode Island’s funding for a video-game company funded by former major league baseball pitcher Curt Schilling. That company, 38 Studios, folded, leaving state taxpayers straddled with about $100 million in debt.
There’s a chapter about my native Boston, rich with historical context; and one about Connecticut, “a study in contrasts” with its massive wealth in some regions and abject poverty in its cities.
Again, I selected chapters with marketing along the Northeast Corridor in mind. I grew up in Boston, live in New York and worked for a decade in Connecticut. I have many contacts in Pennsylvania and the Philadelphia region.
To flesh out the book, I added anecdotal chapters about problems related to open-plan office setups, against the backdrop of the post-Covid work-at-home dynamic; the “technoid scourge,” which is not an older person’s rant against technology, but a cautionary tale for all; and some fun stuff about my years in sports journalism and having to fight the “dumb jock” stereotype.
Nonfiction, business, media, politics, sports
Appropriate age for readers
High school and up
Any message for our readers
A fun read! Check the highly positive reviews on Amazon and LinkedIn. And feel free to see my recent appearance on “The Brand Called You,” a webcast-podcast series hosted by entrepreneur and author Ashutosh Garg. https://tbcy.in/the-importance-of-trained-and-ethical-journalists-in-the-digital-age-paul-burton-journalist-author/?fbclid=IwAR2rwV38IPaNQM1SVP5n5C3o9teRzbNN7npABdrSFyWCtSMLkVL-AoD5ie8
Any hashtags you would want me to use while promoting your Book and Interview
media, broadcasting, finance, career, office, journalism, politics, New York, Boston, New England, Pennsylvania, tech, news, fiascoes, unfiltered, sports, podcasts, editing, writing
5 or more quotes/oneliners from your Book
“I got a writeup in my personnel file that falsely accused me of ‘repeatedly throwing objects at co-workers.’ I never threw anything at anybody. The author of the letter lectured about being a professional, but his behavior at company conferences was anything but.”
“Recent ownership by the recent wave of bad guys – private-equity and hedge-fund folks who’ll kill you for a quarter – has clearly hurt the industry. To call them snakes would offend serpents.”
“Business journalism needn’t be stuffy, and being ‘proper’ doesn’t cut it anymore.”
“I was always the ‘push-the-envelope’ type. ‘Core mission’ to me represented stagnation.”
“[Harrisburg’s] story was tragic, though laced with absurdities … multiple doses of Three Stooges-style slapstick to entertain media, both local and national.”
(Re: municipal bond bid-rigging trial): “Witnesses included a recovering alcoholic who recalled a certain meeting between bankers because ‘the sake was exceptionally good.’ “
(Re: Former baseball pitcher Curt Schilling’s failed video-game company that failed in Rhode Island): “The video-game company belonging to the man with the bloody sock was a bloody mess.”
(Re: life in Hartford): “Hartford – and Connecticut as a whole – had trouble letting down their collective hair. It’s an inevitability when your dominant employer is insurance, an industry that calculates probability of disaster.”
(Re: podcasts/broadcasting): “ ‘John, I lived up to my promise. No NPR snoozers,’ I told a Rhode Island banking source. He replied: ‘Funny you mention NPR. Last week I was on one of their shows and 10 minutes in, I wished the hell I wasn’t on it.’ “
(Re: podcasts/broadcasting): “The voice is yours, not that of some nondescript desk editor.”
“Screw the layers of complexity. Just keep it simple.”
(Re: cafeteria-style open-office setups): “The company tried to put on its best face. One multimedia person even shot footage at our workstations as part of a video for the annual meeting. He asked us to smile and wave. I ducked and ran despite two bad hips. Smile and wave? What are we, North Korea?”
“While effective workplace communication is a must, the kind of fake dog-and-pony ‘collaboration’ you see all too often today is just make-work.”
“Cuomo’s absurd ways included an overreaction to a New York Post article about subway commuters citing a mosquito problem in summer 2016, notably at Rockefeller Station and amid concerns about the Zika virus. After the piece ran, though, MTA officials had trouble finding standing water in the system, so at Cuomo’s insistence they staged a press conference at Whitehall station on the lower tip of Manhattan, which they could shut down while keeping the rest of the system running. The MTA then pumped thousands of gallons of water into the subway pits just so Cuomo could swat mosquitoes along the tracks in front of the TV cameras and further placate his ego.”
About the Author
I am a retired journalist and author of two books, the most recent, “Fiascoes and Foibles: An Unfiltered Look at Public Finance, Media, Politics and Sports” (Elite Authors). It came out last Nov. 28. My earlier book was “Tales from the Newsrooms: An Offbeat Look” (Create Space), in 2011.
“Fiascoes,” a collection of anecdotal essays, reflects largely on my coverage of U.S. public finance over the last 10 years of my career – as a regional editor for a business publication in the shadow of Wall Street – against the backdrop of my 45 years in media. They capture drama, missteps and intrigue I encountered with color and biting, irreverent humor. Plenty of attitude. Topics range from transit/infrastructure to media and politics, and also include broadcasting and podcast dynamics, the alarming clout of tech bureaucracies, the abject failure of open-plan office layouts in the workplace and how my early days in sports journalism shaped and benefited my career.
Unique to my perspective is my blue-collar background. The media employs precious few people from working backgrounds these days. I didn’t go to Harvard, Duke or Stanford and prance right into the New York Times or Wall Street Journal. I was the son of a bartender who navigated a winding road, often working for small-to-medium media outlets who punched above their weight class, and frequently landed a rewarding knockout punch.
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