How to Encourage Compelling Business Writing

You've read the books, attended the sessions, heard the gospel about what it takes to be a better writer.

Make every word tell, advise Strunk and White.

"When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don't mean utterly, but kill most of them ­ ­-- then the rest will be valuable," proposes Mark Twain.

Avoid jargon, reporters. Strong verbs, editors.

People not data, says Don Fry.

Yet, most of us struggle to make earnings stories and enterprise pieces more interesting than quotes squished between bunches of numbers. Why? Because the process of writing crisp, engaging stories begins long before the reporter touches the keyboard.

As an editor you must:

•  Hire well. Every opening is an opportunity to hire someone better than the person you just lost. Not long ago, hiring well meant finding someone who could calculate percentages and had an interest in how companies operated. The Wall Street Journal may have even been part of the daily reading habit. Not good enough any more. Raise the bar. When you interview candidates, talk about writing. Are they into it? Do they know their own strengths and weaknesses as writers? Do they read authors or publications that showcase good writing? Do their clips show lively prose? Do you see a spark that can catch fire in your shop? Are they curious?

•  Talk about good writing. Make it the focus of your staff meetings. Set up specific topics (profiles, Q&As, earning reports) and discuss stories worth emulating. Why were those stories successful? Was it the detail, the quotes? How did the writer capture tension? Or, a person's essence? Collect award-winning stories (Pulitzers, Loebs, Headliners, SABEW's) or anthologies such as the Best Business Stories of the Year. Distribute them and make them the topic of a staff meeting, comparing similar pieces.

•  Encourage mentorships. Chances are, other writers and editors throughout the newsroom will enjoy working with your reporters. Make it routine. Trust that the time taken away from sitting at their terminals is time well spent.

•  Reward good writing. When they hit a high note, reward them. Pats on the back are nice as long as you are specific about why the piece succeeded. Public acknowledgement is good. At a staff meeting, have them discuss how they got the story or how they approached writing it. Enter it in a contest. There is always the monetary award. Don't have a budget for bonuses or gift certificates? How about rewarding reporters with some extra time to do a project that has been high on their to-do list, or an assignment they otherwise would not get a chance to tackle. It doesn't take long for other reporters to notice how to improve their own chances for better assignments.

•  Allow reporters to take risks. Encourage them to take a different approach to a routine story. Sometimes I will suggest they think of themselves as a writer for Fortune or Atlantic Monthly. How would Ken Auletta or James B. Stewart write the story? Or, when given the right circumstances, try humor. Don't allow the reporters to embarrass themselves or your newspaper, but give it a whirl.

•  Do the prep work. Business reporters have to know the bottom line and how a company got there. Is a company sinking deeper in debt, losing or gaining market share, enjoying fat profit margins? But once they are armed with the numbers, what do they do with the information? If they ask routine questions, they will get boring quotes, answers as predictable as a rainy day in Seattle. Remember when Barbara Walters asked Katherine Hepburn if she were a tree, what kind would she be? The question still makes me chuckle. How ridiculous it sounded. But Walters was on to something. She was setting up Hepburn (an oak, by the way) to show some introspection, an insight into her own psyche. What if Hepburn would have answered giant sequoia or magnolia back in 1981? What a statement that would have been. I'm not suggesting you ask reporters to add the tree question to their repertoire, but you can help them come up with your own probing questions. Collect questions worth asking.

•  Think like a reader. Who is your audience? What do they want to know? Is the story written for sources or the people parting with their hard-earned money? Does the story do more than just inform readers of the results of the last quarter, or engage them in the how and why the company achieved those results? Engaging is better.

•  Expect nothing less. Not every story is going to rise above the circumstances, certainly not if you ask reporters to grind out a couple stories a day, or even more than one or two a week. Set a standard, perhaps for the Sunday story or the A1 story at first. Work the piece until it is ready for publication. You slap it into the space and that is what you will get, week in and week out. Make the space valuable, and your staff will rise to the occasion. Really.

Good luck out there.