Business Coverage Requires Authority, Toughness and Fairness

By Brad Bollinger
August 6, 2004 12:37 PM

If there is an overriding goal for each business story that appears in The Press Democrat, it is that it be reported and written in a way that both the CEO would say, "yes, they understand the issue," and a reader totally unfamiliar with the subject would say, "yes, now I understand what happened."

Beyond that, the business report in the daily section and on the front page should have a reputation as being authoritative, tough if needed, but always fair.

Because we are a smaller paper of about 95,000 circulation in Santa Rosa, Calif., with a staff of six full-time business reporters competing with much larger publications like The San Francisco Chronicle, we have to focus our energy. We do that by identifying coverage themes. Those include telecom, wine, real estate and tourism. These are the pillars of the regional economy and these are the coverage areas where we are expected to be the authoritative source of information for readers.

To that end, we have developed databases and lists that allow us to quantify trends. We know when we reach key benchmarks in all of these areas, whether it's the median home price surpassing $500,000 (it has), or when tech employment has hit bottom (we hope it has) and when the wine glut is over (it is).

This penchant to quantify trends has helped spawn major reporting projects, including a key series on wine, the financial struggles of hospitals and, currently, the impact of outsourcing and globalization on the local economy.

More practically, focusing on key themes allows reporters and editors to direct daily coverage.

Each day we start first thing with what we call a "standup," a brief meeting with the reporters and their editor in which writers pitch what they are working on. This is a chance to shape what the section might look like for the next day. Also, this is the time to decide how we might want to cover a major breaking story for the day.

Following the standup is a 10:30 a.m. news meeting for editors to map out the paper. The final main news meeting of the day is at 3 p.m.

The business and technology team at The Press Democrat, affectionately known as the BATs, is one of five reporting teams in the newsroom. The team is responsible for daily, weekend and A1 coverage that falls within its areas of responsibility. Business is a standalone, six-to-eight-page section, seven days a week. In every story, including those from the wine industry, we look for a hard news edge.

As many newspapers have likely found, coverage of business news moved rapidly in the last 10 years from the back bench to the front page. Our jobs, our money, our workplace, our economy are big news. That won't change anytime soon.

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