It’s easy to think of the business world as black and white − or black and red, as the case may be.
But reporter Michael Diamond helps us see that’s it’s so much more.
At its heart, it’s about people. The people whose drive and ingenuity keeps the economy buzzing. The people who struggle to pay bills. The needs and wants of a society and the way that folks build a living, or a legacy, around them. The families who have poured their lives into keeping a generations-old shop or restaurant running. The medical advances and facilities who literally keep people alive and well.
He’s been telling these stories at the Shore for more than two decades, and his understanding and insight of the engine that drives the region are key to understanding our neighbors and community.
Tell us about your background. Where are you from? How and why did you get into reporting? How did you get to the Asbury Park Press?
I grew up in Denver, Colorado, and read the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News each morning, mainly the sports and comics. After I was cut from my freshman baseball team in high school, I needed to find a new activity, so I started writing for the school newspaper. I eventually went to Dickinson College, a liberal arts school in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and became editor of the school paper there. I fell in love with journalism. I’m curious about people’s stories and why the world works the way it does. I enjoy the challenge of staring at a blank screen and writing a story by deadline. And I’m super shy, so it gave me an excuse to talk to strangers. After I graduated, I worked at a small paper outside of Pittsburgh, then worked for five years at a paper in Southern California. When I saw an opening for a business reporter in Asbury Park in 1999, I applied and was hired.Is there one story in your career that really stands out? What was it and why?
Geez, I’ve been here 25 years and written thousands of stories. I’ve covered the ’90s tech bubble, the Great Recession, superstorm Sandy and a pandemic. A couple stand out.
A year after Sept. 11, I went to Middletown, which lost dozens of residents in the terrorist attacks, to see how the community was recovering. I ran into Tom Redmond outside of a church that day, and he said: “I’m really glad I’m alive. Just feeling the sun here and my feet on the ground and my granddaughter’s hand.”
Twenty years later, I visited hospitals to interview workers who were on the front-line of the worst pandemic the world had seen in a century. They didn’t have enough equipment. They didn’t know how to treat the illness. They were getting sick themselves. That was a scary time.
What is one thing about yourself that would surprise people?
I don’t know the first thing about business. At least, I hope that surprises people. If not, I’m in trouble. I was an American Studies major in college and never took an economics course in my life. At my first paper in the Pittsburgh suburbs, a bunch of us were trying out. We gathered in the lobby of a Days Inn and got our assignments. Mine was business. I thought, “Uh oh, this isn’t good.” As the editor walked out of the room, someone asked him how he came up with the assignments. “We drew names out of a hat,” he said. What is it about covering business that calls to you?
Business stories are no different than sports or news or features. At heart, they are about people. And they can be very dramatic: Small business owners risking everything to make their idea work; rank-and-file workers pursuing their own passions, while trying to make ends meet. Learning about their stories and telling them energizes me.