Making the Case for Enterprise

By Jonathan Higuera

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Producing high-impact enterprise journalism has always required tenacity, aggressiveness and execution, not to mention the full support of your editors. Now the newspaper industry’s sprint to online and 24-7 operations and the accompanying newsroom staffing cuts have made it more difficult to pull off.

Writing those types of enterprise jewels is the reason many of us got into the field in the first place. They provide personal and professional satisfaction that sustains many journalists through less glamorous parts of the job.

Some reporters are successfully navigating the newsroom minefield to produce high-quality, in-depth enterprise reports. Their strategies vary but the results are similar: journalism that makes a difference.

Steve Everly, a business writer who covers the energy industry for The Kansas City Star, wrote a series last year on how oil companies take advantage of expanding hot fuel to shortchange American motorists. The key, he says, was the pre-reporting stage, which in this case took a full year. It meant a lot of calls and work at the end of the day or during periods between writing daily stories, he said.

“I wanted to be able to quantify this. I knew I could do an anecdotal story by talking to truckers and trucking organizations but I wanted to go beyond that.”

It was during the pre-reporting stage – he didn’t even approach his editors about the idea during this time -- that he discovered crucial documents. One study from the National Institute of Standards and Technology that examined actual fuel temperature at 1,000 gas stations became part of the basis for his story.

“It wasn’t until I got that data that I could say there was a solid foundation to proceed,” he recalled.

He pitched the story to his editors with a memo that laid out what he knew about the issue and how he would nail the story down. Once he got their support, it took four months of full-time reporting, cut free from his daily reporting duties.

“For me, there comes a point that you’re so focused that to break away and do a daily is disruptive,” he said.

Shannon Behnken, a business reporter for the Tampa Tribune, used the success of one enterprise story as leverage to do another larger piece on a similar topic. The first series uncovered how a cluster of homes in a low-income neighborhood were being sold for more than their value. It profiled a real estate agent who had engineered the sales and how the practice was hurting investors. It also led to reform as state and federal investigators probed the practice.

Based on a tip from a property appraiser, the story took two months of full-time reporting to complete. She did two weeks of preliminary reporting to make sure she could successfully go after the story and before pitching it to a senior editor. It led to an even larger enterprise project revolving around the same issue but with many more homes.

“If I had not done the first story, I would not have been able to do this story,” she said. “I used the same sources and this time the FBI talked to me off the record, which they didn’t do the first time.”

Binyamin Appelbaum, who covers financial services for The Charlotte Observer, agrees the gestation period for longer enterprise pieces can be months. But reporters earn trust from editors to get the time to work on larger projects by delivering work that impresses. His first large enterprise piece for the Observer required working late at night and on weekends. The story chronicled discrimination in home mortgage lending and it ran the same day Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans.

“Once you show an editor that you can do something, they are much more willing to invest in you again,” he said. “They are actually investing in you because you won’t be doing daily stories during that time. They want a return on that investment.”

Only at the Observer for three years, he has several longer investigative pieces under his belt.

“There comes a point in any enterprise story I’ve worked on when you need to clear the decks and focus on that. It becomes so big and complicated that doing any less is courting disaster,” he advised.

But the preliminary reporting doesn’t always work out. Appelbaum recalled spending “more time than I should have” with a source on one project who he thought would exemplify how people are hurt by low credit scores through no fault of their own. When it didn’t pan out, he had to move on and the project was never published.

“At the time her story seemed incredibly plausible but it turned out to be a pipe dream,” he said. “You shouldn’t be penalized when stuff like that happens.”

Everly added that he routinely spends time tracking down leads and information that never gets written.

“There are a few longer stories I’ve done and a lot that I have not done,” he said.

For reporters, the lesson is clear. Make sure your ducks are all lined up before approaching the editors you are seeking support from.

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