Building the Business Curriculum

By Jonathan Higuera
May 28, 2008 06:41 PM

One lament I’ve had in my business writing career is that I never prepared for covering business news in college. I took all the newsgathering classes I could, but aside from one advertising class in the b-school, there were no business reporting classes.

Thankfully, things have changed. More journalism departments at universities and colleges now offer certificates, minors and specializations in business reporting. To be sure, many require coursework taken in the business school. But there’s also greater awareness of the need to give students experience in the unique nature of gathering business news.

The professors and professionals leading these efforts are zeroing in on common ground when it comes to what should be taught: some macroeconomics, such as learning about the Federal Reserve and SEC, basic accounting principles for understanding balance sheets and other reports, using business research tools such as Hoover’s, as well as plenty of hands-on experience in writing business stories starting with the dreaded earnings report.

“A lot of business desks don’t want to teach interns what to do,” says Professor Chris Roush, who teaches the business journalism courses at the University of North Carolina.  “They want them to come in and hit the ground running.”

UNC offers a certificate in business journalism and non-journalism majors can earn a minor in business journalism. The main course is “Business Reporting” taught by Roush.

He judges the program’s effectiveness by how many of his students land internships or jobs with the business press. This summer, 10 of his students are participating in internships with media companies such as Bloomberg News, Reuters, Triangle Business Journal and The Charlotte Observer.

“For places like Reuters and Bloomberg, the internship requires giving candidates a test,” said Roush. “If you don’t know how many stocks are in the Dow Jones Industrial Average or what happens to bond yields when the Fed raises interest rates, they won’t even look at you.”

At Miami University of Ohio, journalism instructor Annie-Laurie Blair taught a 3-credit course in business journalism in the spring semester. The students also served in an internship as part of the course.

“To teach business journalism effectively, I think we educators have to connect with students in an interactive manner,” said Blair, whose previous newsroom jobs include former business editor of the Ithaca Journal and assistant business editor of The Cincinnati Enquirer. “We need to find good consumer examples that are real to them.”

Laura Castaneda, a journalism professor at the University of Southern California, will be teaching a business reporting class this fall, and she agrees that students need a combination of both business knowledge and news reporting skills.

“I think an MBA or a business degree wouldn’t hurt,” she says.  “However, journalism students also need to know how to find stories and write them for a mass, general interest market. I’m not sure if they’ll get that by taking business courses only.”

Her goal is for the students to have some understanding of the history of consumerism in the U.S., as well as marketing and demographics, “all of which speak to pocketbook issues and potential stories involving fraud.”

At Michigan State University, a seminar course on business journalism drew about eight students last fall, said Bill McWhirter, an editor-in-residence at the journalism school and a former longtime correspondent for Time magazine. It was the school’s second seminar on the topic and it continues to evolve, he said.

One thing he’s learned is that many students are coming in with little or no knowledge of the business world.

“It’s a total alien environment,” he said. “Kids often have insecurity about learning business and it’s masked in disinterest or skepticism.”

One change he’ll make for the next seminar is giving the students a history of money at the beginning of the seminar. That’s because many of the students had no “frame of reference” before they were learning about the SEC, Federal Reserve and business reporting techniques.

“We’ll introduce the core philosophy about where money comes from, including the early theorists on money such as Adam Smith and Tulip mania.”

McWhirter encourages more journalism schools to offer business journalism courses, as there are still many that have yet to embrace it.

“For all we talk about it, we’re really still at a starting point,” he said.

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