Don't commit to being a columnist unless you're willing to do it right. Report your behind off, so you have something original and useful to say. Say it in a way that will interest someone other than you, your family and your sources.

He is a veteran journalist who worked at Newsweek before being hired by Fortune and has spoken about the economy on TV shows such as Charlie Rose The Colbert Report and regularly on American Public Media's Marketplace found on NPR. Allan Sloan is an American journalist who is senior editor at large at Fortune magazine.

In 2008 Sloan won the Gerald Loeb Award for the seventh time. The prize was given for his story "House of Junk" which showed how subprime mortgages went bad.