In these last three columns of my last issue, I’ll be playing historian, taking a moment to reflect on the business section, its fluctuating focuses and its forward trajectory.
I opted out of writing a farewell letter, but thought this might be a decent substitute — not to mention Francia and I thought it would make for a strong tradition for the section.
As I’ve mentioned before, business reporting wasn’t in the stars for me — until last year. Out of necessity and gratitude I took the reins, though I felt unsure.
But my first issue in summer 2023 served a solid starting block. The training I received, which admittedly seemed pedantic at the time, ended up giving me more time to write for the section by securing the knowledge I needed to transition from editing the arts and culture section. Together, seven writers and I packed the section with 11 well-rounded articles.
It is my genuine belief that The Ticker can serve as a paper of record for the Baruch College community and even the City University of New York system as a whole. One reason for that is the business section’s watchful coverage of developments within the Zicklin School of Business, the largest in the nation.
Those developments include the Department of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, which the Zicklin school created in July 2023. Chair Scott Newbert spoke with The Ticker and conveyed the move as one step toward realizing a goal brooding within the college for some time — promoting student entrepreneurship.
We hit the ground running in late August and early September: we profiled ambitious clubs, entrepreneurial students and local business owners while covering IPO season, layoffs, bankruptcies, lawsuits, economic trends and more.
Meanwhile, the Zicklin School’s new dean, Bruce Weber, told The Ticker he would work to reimagine the business school’s vision, think of a game plan for integrating artificial intelligence in classrooms and increase Zicklin students’ exposure to top firms in New York through partnerships like the New York Jobs CEO Council.
On Sept. 20, PricewaterhouseCoopers Global Chair Bob Moritz was consequently invited to speak at an event on the 14th floor of the William and Anita Newman Vertical Campus. The Ticker landed an interview beforehand and asked Moritz to explain how top firms approach hiring CUNY students, to which he explained his visitation itself was a signal on the part of the Council to rethink formal education and its role in upskilling the workforce.
Nearer to finals season, the weekly writers tapered slightly, but a remnant kept writing.
Fast forward to January 2024, when the former Business Editor Caryl Anne Francia took over the section for the paper’s first winter issue while I was researching in India with the National Science Foundation.
Once the spring semester began, darker times arrived. For a while, writers for the section steadily dwindled. Taking seven classes, I hit my all-time low of three articles one issue.
But starting in March, I found new writers, many of whom contributed to this last issue. They buoyed the section until we got our collective second wind — we interviewed more local business owners and covered housing and Big Tech.
However, there was another noticeable shift. Clubs were getting more attention from bulge bracket banks on Wall Street. Baruch had been climbing college rankings by The Wall Street Journal after a re-evaluation of its value criteria, but now The New York Times was calling Baruch a “model college” and an “upward mobility machine.”
That leaves us here, with the latest news as reported in this last issue.
The takeaway here is about one place where The Ticker’s value lies — in the long term. The events recorded here in The Ticker within the Zicklin School, Baruch, the city and society at large are likely, in my eyes, to portend more than is readily visible in the same way that the events of the past speak eerily to students knowledgeable of history today.
As the section is placed in the hands of Irza Waraich, who is sure to introduce herself to you all, I’ll leave you with this: thanks for reading, and to the students of the future, I hope for your sake that graduation is as bittersweet as it is for me.
