An Interview: Lauren Thomas, The Wall Street Journal
This week I sat down with Lauren Thomas, lead deals reporter at The Wall Street Journal.
Did you always want to be a journalist?
No. I always liked to write, but more creative writing. In middle school, I was into media and entertainment, and I remember thinking I was going to move to Los Angeles and do something in Hollywood. Then once I got into high school, I became more interested in business—my dad was in the real estate industry. By the end of high school, I still hadn’t figured out what to do, and I went to college thinking about a business major.
I went to UNC Chapel Hill and was 50/50 taking business and journalism classes. That set me on a track to pursue financial journalism.
What was the turning point or experience that made you take the path of journalism?
Chris Roush (assistant vice president of strategic partnerships at Elon University and founder of Talking Biz News) was a professor at UNC Chapel Hill and a true mentor to me. I remember doing a tour before I applied and visiting the journalism school. My dad and I met Chris, and I latched onto him early on as a professor turned mentor. He played a big role in helping me shape my interests into a feasible journalism career. He had courses dedicated to business journalism, which was helpful, and he was plugged into Bloomberg and CNBC. He helped get me my first internship at TheStreet.com right after my freshman year.
When I was at TheStreet.com, I sat next to Brian Sozzi—he was one of the first people I ever met in professional journalism. I’d go into the office early in the morning, and he’d already be there—maybe even slept there, he was always working. He’d be there drinking his 24-ounce coffee and always had so much energy. I learned so much from him, and that really set me on a path to do something in the media industry.
I remember writing my first article at TheStreet.com. My first job as a kid was as an ice cream scooper, and I remember saying I wanted to do a story on ice cream. So I went all around New York, interviewed ice cream shop owners, and tied the story back to Baskin-Robbins. And there it was, July 24, 2014, my first story, “Here's How You Invest in Your Ice Cream and Eat it Too.”
I interned at Bloomberg the following summer—which Chris also helped me get—and at that point, I was building my network in New York. I connected with CNBC and got an internship there the following summer. Then CNBC offered me a full-time job after I graduated, and the rest was history.
You've been a journalist for over a decade, working at TheStreet.com, Bloomberg, CNBC, and now The Wall Street Journal. With hundreds of stories written, what are some of the stories you're most proud of and why?
During Covid, I was working at CNBC covering retail and following Peloton. It was the hottest stock and on a tear, but I was hearing internal rumblings and started learning how things were souring internally. I broke a series of stories on the challenges being faced internally and the overarching bigger story about the brand during Covid—what people were buying and not buying. What does this mean? I was really in the weeds and was owning it and breaking the news. People were noticing it, and it was exciting. Those are similar skills to what I use now in breaking big deals and stories.
As Lead Deals Reporter, you’re focused on mergers and acquisitions and shareholder activism. How do you get most of your stories?
This job is all about relationships at the end of the day. My first year on the M&A beat, I was never in the office. I was out there meeting everyone— bankers, lawyers, PR firms, advisors, etc. You cast a wide net and get in front of the power players and movers and shakers on Wall Street. The longer you’re in your role, the better you get a sense of who’s doing the work, who’s with what company, etc., and you can map it out and organize and connect the dots in your head.
It’s really about who you know and a lot of meeting with people—catching up with people over breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And sometimes, it’s the smaller things you pick up on in the conversation. They don’t seem like much at the time, but you can take it to someone and say, “I heard this … have you heard anything about this?” It snowballs, and then all of a sudden, you’re chasing a scoop.
In this job, you need to stay in front of conversations and know the right people so that when things are getting announced, they’re either strategically giving you the scoop, or you’re in the right place at the right time and know the right people to get the scoop. I’m always positioning myself, and I’m straightforward. The harder ones to get are when they don’t want the story to leak out and I’m trying to piece it together before the press release gets out. It can be exhausting.
What percentage of stories are pitched to you as exclusives versus scooped by your journalist investigations?
Lately, there have been fewer deals in general, and when deals do get done, they’re more fragile. Coming out of Covid and now with high rates and a lot of uncertainty, the percentage of deals handed to me to write up is a lot less, maybe 85/15—80% to 85% of the time I’m hunting down stories and scoops on my own, and 15% to 20% of the time they’re given to me. I’ve even heard from PR teams that companies are a lot more hesitant to go to a reporter in advance. They’re more nervous—they’re not sure if it’s a done deal and waiting until it’s signed on the dotted line. And I’m over here trying to pitch, “Come to me early, the story will be better,” but there’s just more reluctance lately and I’m not sure if it’ll ever shift back.
When you get a lead, how quickly do you try to confirm details and turn around a story?
Almost immediately—as quickly as possible. In this world, you don’t want to sit on something for long, because chances are if I’ve heard about it, another reporter at another publication has already heard about it or will hear about it in a couple of hours, so I need to move quickly.
For example, if I pick up on something in the morning, I hope that by the end of the day, I’ve called everyone I could and ruled out if it’s true or a rumor—basically, putting all my ducks in a row to break it.
I might get a tip in the morning and push a story out in the afternoon, and that’s the best-case scenario. I don’t want to go to sleep worrying that I’ll wake up and find out that somebody else broke the story.
This job is all about meetings and being out and about. But in a meeting, you’re not looking at your phone, and you could get a text or scoop at any time, so it’s tough to juggle—it’s a big balancing act. One to two days a week, I try to do no-meeting days—days just dedicated to making phone calls with no distractions. Those are often my most productive days.
How, in your opinion, has the role of journalism changed over the past few years?
I think that it’s always been about speed, but now even more so—especially with the job I have. It’s very competitive—we compete with Bloomberg, Reuters, the Financial Times, and The New York Times—and in breaking deals, you want to be first.
Nowadays, it’s so easy for something to go on a social media platform like X—someone puts out one sentence of a headline without putting a story together—so when you have something, you have to go fast, because it’s down to the seconds. I’ve gotten beat by seconds before. That is a big shift—the ease and speed of putting things out on the internet.
The other thing is brevity. Even in my time at the Journal, we are starting to experiment with new formats for our stories—more straightforward, shorter, fewer words, subheads with bullet points, anything that makes it more digestible. It’s almost like a newsletter format because that’s what readers want—the company, the price. Readers want you to cut to the chase. While that’s not anything new, it’s been 10x more in the past few years, and I’m interested to see how we at The Wall Street Journal are navigating that.
Everywhere I’ve worked has had high standards, and it can be stressful to see somebody (not a journalist) put something out quicker than you. But if we don’t have sourcing solid enough to put something out, we won’t. The story and sources need to be super solid before pushing anything out. And then if the story is out, we have to decide, “Do we match it, advance it, add any more details, etc.” to determine if we still cover it.
What are some trends in journalism you're seeing that are here to stay?
The podcast movement continues to be strong. But now, it’s podcasts with a video component. People are experimenting more with podcasts and video, including us at the Journal. It’ll be interesting to see if consumers actually like that, but podcasts, visuals, and video are really growing.
Another big trend is reporters being the brand. Now, the reporter is the brand versus the organization. The organization helps as part of the reporter’s personal brand, but I feel that’s the direction we’re all going, which is why you see some reporters breaking out of legacy media and experimenting with their own thing and bringing their own following along. Alex Konrad left Forbes to start Upstarts Media, and he’s already had a few scoops, and that’s cool to see. I think you’ll see more of that. For the Journal, I think they realize that they need to invest and help reporters grow their own brands within the organization.
What's driving your coverage these days?
What the Journal does best is come up with stories and dig into them in a way you can’t find elsewhere, so I’m always on the lookout—aside from breaking the next deal—for bigger profiles of interesting people in the next generation. Next-gen private equity investors who are looking at up-and-coming activist investors, or young business professionals looking up to the next generation when Carl Icahn is no longer in the industry, for example. So, I’m increasingly trying to spend more time there. It’s a lot of fun to tell these stories that have a bigger human element to them. So, when I’m not breaking deals, I’m looking for the next rising star.
As a journalist, do you consider yourself a content creator?
No. Content creators by definition are different. They’re doing content through different forms of media, and I associate that with videos and photos and written content—but they have more voice and opinion, and that’s different in my mind than journalism. With journalism, you’re stating the facts. I’m not an opinion writer: I’m writing a story based on facts.
Content creators also have a lot more leeway on what they can say and publish. The bottom line is that content creators have more voice and share their opinions, and that’s not what you do as a journalist. During Covid, there was a big moment with regular people breaking news. People would read articles written verbatim by a reporter and not even cite them—it’s like, where do you draw the line?
What do the best PR pitches you get include?
Casual, like, “Let’s hop on the phone so I can tell you what I’ve got.” I would rather have a quick five-minute conversation on the phone—for me, it’s so much easier than reading a long email. The second part is to know my job and what we’re trying to achieve at the Journal. I get pitches where I can’t exclusively break something, and a lot of my coverage is exclusive breaking news. The worst is blanket outreach that other reporters receive, as well.
So, exclusive or bust?
Pretty much, unless you have a great story to tell (even if not scoop-driven) about an interesting company or person in the Wall Street world. Those are not as transactional.
But if the outreach is around a deal or big Wall Street news moment, it needs to be an exclusive. If I don’t get a scoop and someone else gets the scoop or it’s announced, I will not write about the story. I’m already looking for the next scoop and won’t cover something that’s already out there, because it’s a commodity at that point.
What's the best way to pitch you a story?
Send me a quick email and let me know you’re calling me. “Can we hop on the phone?” And then I want to have a conversation. I also like texting. Do not send me a long email. Give me the gist and ask me to get on a phone call. I still get long emails with bullet points from PR firms and I automatically write them off. More casual is the way to go—it’s so much more effective.
I don’t check my messages on social media. I spend a lot of time lurking on LinkedIn—who’s connected to who, who’s working where, who’s saying what—but I don’t check my LinkedIn and X messages. I’ll check my texts, emails, and phone calls.
Relationships help. Once I meet someone, the next time I see their name pop up in my inbox, I think of it differently. I don’t glaze over it like I may with others.