Business writer, editor

    
Recent citings...
    ©   Happy to start 2009 as a "Philebrity," even because of what's called "back-to-work economic doomsday light reading." Philebrity.com, the irreverent blog/chronicle of news, gossip, politics and media cited my piece on PlanPhilly.com about what the recession is meaning -- and will mean -- for Philly area development.
    ©   The same piece was talked about on the excellent "Changing Skyline" blog by the Philadelphia Inquirer's inimitable architecture critic, Inga Saffron. 
 
    ©   And all of us here at ThomasJWalsh.info are proud to be included on the list of  "Most-Discussed Articles from 2008" on the U. of Pennsylvania Wharton School's . I was lucky enough to attend and report on a quickly arranged discussion in September, just as the financial crisis was entering full meltdown mode, between several prestigious Wharton professors and a large auditorium of concerned students. (Even while we talked and listened early that evening, news was breaking about the enormous AIG collapse.) The resulting story was titled, "Will the Levee Break? An Ocean of Bad Debt Rises despite Fed Rescues."  Evidently, the answer to the question in that particular headline was, well, yes. The story was "most-discussed" of 2008 in the Finance and Investment" category.
     
    ANYWAY, that's not enough about me. Here's the boilerplate: 
    I’m a Philadelphia-area freelance journalist with a varied news background, predominantly in business reporting. Over the years I’ve done plenty of feature writing as well, along with city-desk reporting, with some broadcasting – mostly radio – mixed in.

    I’ve been freelancing full-time for more than a year now, with a lot of work done for two well-read business news Web sites based at the University of Pennsylvania. One is PlanPhilly.com, affiliated with Penn's School of Design and their PennPraxis project. The other is the highly respected Wharton school online business publication, Knowledge@Wharton. Recent stories from these sites are included here on my "My Recent Clips" page.
 
    Other things keeping me busy include a return to reporting on the casino industry as it spills across the Pennsylvania / Delaware Valley landscape and beyond. I’ve also returned to reporting on economic development at a new Commonwealth-wide site called Keystone Edge, along with contributing to "Greater Philadelphia: Projects, Markets, Trends, and Trendsetters," a commercial real estate and economic development guide recently published by Greg Byrnes, a veteran news man and development star.

    Before starting this business, I was an editor for a forward-thinking international philanthropy for two years, where I still do consulting work.

    I'm also co-authoring a book on behalf of Philadelphia Academies Inc. to mark that organization's 40th year in 2009.

    Before all this freelancing, I covered the casino industry in the birthplace of legalized gambling in the United States, Reno, Nev. – about as colorful a location as you’ll find anywhere –  breaking casino news and tracking tourism trends in nearby Lake Tahoe. Prior to that, I was writing about mortgage-backed securities for a successful boutique real estate Web site, years before the mortgage crisis hit the residential side.

     I covered Center City Philadelphia’s turnaround in the late ’90s for the city’s best source of business news. And I’ve written dozens of features and business stories for the City of Brotherly Love’s biggest daily, where I had a weekly column for two years. That all came after a five-year stint as a broadcast journalist in the U.S. Navy, stationed here, and here, and here.

    If you're here to read clips or confirm credentials, let me if there is anything else you'd like to see.

    Have a great day.

  

    – Tom Walsh