Crafting the Local Angle to a National Business Story

The current prominence of business coverage has been largely driven by high-profile stories covered by publications in major-market cities.

For the rest of the country, the challenge lies in offering readers an angle at the local level.

"When so many big national stories are on the radio or the evening news, or the Internet, for newspapers to be relevant to our readers, we need to push past the headline and figure out how the news affects our readers," observes Kate Lee Butler, Senior Business Team Leader with The Orange County Register. "At the Register, we're constantly asking ourselves, what does this mean to our readers and how can we take the story or the sidebar in that direction?"

When a major financial story hits the national press, there are some correlations all journalists should try to piece together. There are also several sources you should have in your rolodex who can be a phone call away from splashing your story with a local perspective on what national happenings mean to your community.

While the approach to every article is a unique one, messages can be gleaned from national stories. Maria Trombly, a correspondent for Securities Industry News, suggests that reporters ask the following questions:

• Some recent scandals arose, in part, because the corporate boards were packed with cronies. How independent are the boards of local public companies?
• Some scandals have implications for small investors. What advice do local financial planners have to offer? Have any of their customers been affected?
• Some financial scandals result in layoffs. When Arthur Andersen folded, were any local offices affected?
• Sometimes, the federal government doesn't do enough to protect investors and states have to step in -- I'm thinking of New York attorney general Eliot Spitzer here. Is your state planning to take action as well?

Having community officials in your file who can answer some of these questions is critical to developing a complete story.

"Local financial planners, accountants and business professors are always good experts to cultivate to help you figure out what's going on and to get a local voice into the story," Trombly says. "Then you want to know what the biggest local companies are and their management."

Many journalists have received a wake-up call to get on the money trail.

"One of the sobering lessons of Enron was that a lot of people didn't understand the company's book-keeping or finances but were reluctant to question things," Butler says. "The main lesson is that even businesses and people that appear successful may not be successful on their honest business talent. The old saw about 'follow the money' still applies to covering local companies."

The lessons from these meltdowns provide a rapid fire of questions that journalists should have in their arsenal, according to Trombly:

• How open are the books?
• Are the accountants and the tax consultants two different groups of people?
• How much does the company pay in taxes, or does it use off-shore tax shelters?
• How much do the top execs make compared to the regular working stiffs?
• What is the company's environmental record?

"Find out what groups monitor what the company does, and get on their mailing lists," Trombly recommends. "There might be environmental groups, investment research outfits, disgruntled former employees and labor activists -- any of whom might be a good source for a quote."

Forcing the issue?

Crafting a relevant local angle to a major story can provide a good deal of high-value information to your readers. But there is a danger of forcing the issue -- writing a story that has little or no national connection.

"You shouldn't be so focused on finding the local angle that you lose the main point of the big story," Butler recommends. "Almost every newsroom I've worked in has a chart or poster somewhere with some version of 'Nuclear holocaust, 10,000 killed, two local people harmed.' That was a kind of journalist humor, but also I think a reminder not to get so carried with the local angle that you lose perspective."

Be careful not to travel down this slippery slope. Editors will likely ask you for justification.

To decide if a local angle even exists, do your homework first.

"A great thing about localizing national stories is that it gives a news hook for something that would otherwise be a feature," Trombly observes. "But, of course, a story has to be able to stand on its own if the news hook is taken off. If a local publicly-traded company doesn't have any governance problems, it would be a pretty weak story if you led off with a national scandal and ended with 'but we don't have that problem here'."

Conversely, if you do discover a governance issue with one of the companies you cover, play up the problem in the lead while succinctly weaving in details about the national environment.

It's important to keep in mind the sophistication of your audience and what information you deem pertinent to it as you construct local stories.

"I think too many writers make financial stuff sound too hard," Trombly says. "If you look long enough, you can always find an analogy, a good-versus-evil conflict of some kind that makes the topic approachable. In any scandal, there's always someone who gets money they don't deserve, and folks who lose. Focus on that, don't focus on the mechanism."

Copyright © 2008 Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism