Business Writer Reflects on Transition

Like many business journalists, I didn't intend to be one. I just wanted to be a journalist who got paid to uncover societal ills, expose wrongdoing and make the world a better, fairer place. (Geez are you serious, I get paid to do this!)

I didn't realize at the time that business reporting could offer all that and more.

Actually, it was well into my media career when I transitioned to business writing. And it came about because I needed a job and the local paper had an opening for a business writer, not a metro reporter. I used a couple of clips that could roughly be construed as business stories to showcase my potential. One was a magazine piece about the North American Free Trade Agreement and another reported on the responsibilities of serving on corporate and non-profit boards.

Therein lays the truth of the matter: Much of what a metro reporter writes about are business stories. Economic development, company layoffs, a new plant coming to an area, workplace issues, taxpayer subsidies of stadiums and even immigration stories are all within the purview of a metro reporter or business reporter.

What differentiates the business reporter, in my mind, is the intense focus on making sense of the financial aspects of any story. Understanding who the winners and losers are and providing the financial motivation are critical parts of business stories.

And it often tells the story.

Like all good reads, informed business writing humanizes the subject matter. It is about people because people make decisions for their companies. But it's also about covering companies, markets, the economy and other trends that impact on that company and those decisions. So if a firm decides to sell off a portion of the business, enter into a partnership or acquire another firm, a resourceful business story offers a framework for readers to understand the rationale for such decisions.

I wish the training offered by the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism would have been around in 1996 when I transitioned onto the business desk. It would have been an excellent resource to learn more about what makes a business story shine. It could have sped up my learning curve and put more tools at my disposal for discerning what was critical and what was not. It would have given me a faster introduction to how business operates, hence how decisions are reached.

The center's web site and workshops provide an opportunity for entry-level, mid-level and even senior-level journalists to get some needed advice and instruction on business reporting, whether it's deciphering SEC documents, incorporating numbers in a reader-friendly manner into your prose or developing reliable sources in a company or industry.

Perhaps as importantly, it allows you to become more familiar with the language and concepts of U.S.-style business.

Any reporter with a non-business background can attest to the value of that after writing their first earnings report.

I treated my first full-time business writing job as I treated a new beat: I met everybody I could, read everything I could and tried to learn from my mistakes. The fact is that it was a lot bigger bite to chew off than mastering a single beat. But I also realized that the basics of good journalism could get you started down the right path. What followed was a slow, methodical process of building a business knowledge bank. So while it seems I woke up one day and magically understood how price-to-earnings ratios are arrived at and what they mean, I know that road was much longer and harder than I care to admit.

Jonathan Higuera is the Deputy Director of the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism.

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