The Financial Crisis Seen from London and New York

The media in the two top Western financial centers, London and New York, differed in emphasis in their reporting of Sunday's dramatic turmoil on Wall Street – including the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers – with the British media tending to highlight the human side, while their American counterparts stressed the enormity of the blow to U.S. and global financial systems.

London

British newspapers paid particular attention to the sorry plight of the employees of Lehman Brothers and other faltering financial organizations, including two pieces in The Guardian: Wall Street jobs cull begins as Lehman rescue bid fails and Wall Street crisis: Lehman staff tell their stories: Lehman Brothers employees on both sides of the Atlantic describe their shock, anger and sadness at the collapse of the bank.

On September 15, The Times published Shock and tears as staff sent home while the Financial Times rerported Shocked Lehman staff told to "move on". The Daily Telegraph featured Meltdown Monday: Stock markets tumble and thousands lose jobs’ as well as a human interest piece on how U.S. Treasury Hank Paulson had risen from a farm-boy to the pinnacles of international finance while keeping his heart in the agricultural Midwest. The piece included the following comment:

A comparison was recently drawn in The Telegraph between the ordinary Americans being saved in the Freddie-Fannie bailout and the po-faced couple standing in front of their clapboard homestead of Grant Wood’s painting American Gothic. Actually, the analogy could be taken further. See Mr. Paulson, particularly when he’s wearing his glasses and looking especially solemn, and one is certainly reminded of Wood’s pitchfork-clutching farmer. The farmer would probably approve of the financier.

The Times, in assessing the spreading impact of the financial upheaval, managed to find an Australian strategist who imaginatively compared the crisis to Lord Voldemort, the evil character in the Harry Potter novels who keeps returning from the dead.

As might be expected, the Financial Times devoted extensive coverage to the crisis and its global repercussions, including Kill or cure for Wall Street malaise and Dragon of moral hazard is going to take some impaling.

New York/Washington

The most interesting feature of U.S. reporting was The Washington Post’s decision to lead its print edition with no fewer than three single-column stories under a large headline that simply announced Massive Shifts on Wall Street. This clearly reflected the changed priorities of The Washington Post's new executive editor, Marcus Brauchli, a former senior editor at The Wall Street Journal, who had only been a few days in his job. Under his predecessor, Len Downie, The Washington Post tended to play down economic and financial stories, often relegating important developments to the business pages. The three headlines from that print edition are: Troubled Bank to File for Bankruptcy, A New Architecture for the Financial World, and Weekend Merger Struck with Bank of America.

The New York Times did well with an interesting reaction piece from Europe, pointing out that while Europeans often display schadenfreude at bad news from America, they found little cause for joy in the latest developments, because the Wall Street crisis so clearly threatened European prosperity as well.

The Wall Street Journal echoed the concerns of British newspapers about the fate of Lehman Brothers' employees, with a strong emphasis on human interest. The paper took a broader look at the serious financial implications of the crisis with a report that began, "the American financial system was shaken to its core on Sunday.

The financial crisis ousted reports on the devastating Hurricane Ike from the top headlines in most major American papers, except, understandably, in Texas, where Ike wrought the most havoc.