Five Questions with Rick Christie

Rick Christie, assistant managing editor for Business at The Palm Beach Post, talked with Jonathan Higuera about recent changes to the Business section and how the department spearheaded a major project last year on diabetes. That project recently won an EPpy Award from Editor & Publisher for Best Special Feature in a Web Site – Enterprise.

1. How big is your staff and how do you make the best use of your resources to provide quality coverage?
We currently have eight reporters, one columnist, one clerk and three editors. Every reporter has a primary coverage area, with secondary and tertiary beats to monitor. Primary duties are divided amongst editors, with help available.

We don’t hesitate to spread the wealth on major stories/packages; so everyone has to know something about someone else’s beat. Also, everyone writes and edits for both print and online. Every reporter and editor is responsible for feeding and updating the Web, as well as brainstorming about ways to enhance stories on the Web. The reporters and editors are also trained in video editing.

2. What types of stories resonate with your readers?
Consumer/economic issues, real estate, retail, local business, personal investment and product/services trends.

3. Tell us about the Diabetes project your staff completed last year?
The project, which took six months to do, began as a business story looking at how much money was being made off the growth of the disease. We have Liberty Medical Supply, the nation's largest supplier of diabetes testing kits, in our backyard. But the more we looked at it, the more we felt that it was a much bigger and broader issue.

When we decided to expand the project, we went all the way. From the outset, we planned and partnered with online, radio and TV to capture the scope of the disease's impact locally, statewide and nationally. That meant working with other departments so we could have access to their personnel and section space.

We were fortunate that we had a clear plan to present to everyone, and the disease evoked so much emotion from just about every colleague we went to for help. It was an easy sell because people wanted to be a part of it.

Although the project was originally presented as running over four days in print, the space and scope of it grew --largely because of advertiser response. That allowed us more space and time for journalism.

We also worked with our community relations department to bring in a local hospital to do free glucose and blood pressure screenings for the company’s employees as part of the project. The project can still be found online at http://www.palmbeachpost.com/diabetes

4. Your paper recently made some changes to the business section. How will these impact readers?
The real estate downturn has hit our market extremely hard. So we’ve had to make some very tough decisions when it comes to controlling costs, like newsprint. That resulted in us losing the Sunday Business section and moving Business inside the Local section another three days out of the week. And that may not be the last of it.

I think anyone looking at it objectively would say the changes are bad for readers -- at least initially. If that was not the case, we wouldn't have agonized over it so much. It’s been a blow for the Business staff, and our most loyal Business section readers.

But rather than hang our heads, we put them together to come up with ways to enhance The Post’s Business report. We created an online-only Sunday Business magazine called The Conversation; which has seen strong page-view growth since its soft launch in April. We created two online-only columns and a business cartoon for it.

We also enhanced the “local” content and redesigned the front of the inside Local Business section, the most popular section in Monday’s paper. And that has received rave reviews from the business community.

We’ve planned up to six special sections a year that will focus on big business issues and trends, but how they translate on a local level; that will give advertising a real news vehicle to sell around.

 5. What advice do you have for those who manage and run newspaper business sections?
“It’s the economy, stupid.” No, it’s not original. But it’s true. And every Business news department should have a banner proclaiming it. Right now, the Business Desk should be the tip of the spear for coverage of the most important issue facing this country. I don't care what kind of gut shots you’ve been taking, if you can’t find a way to juice up your staff (and newspaper) to cover this issue the way your readers/users need you to, then you ought to quit, go cover Sports and give someone else a chance.

Things are not going back to the way they were; even when the economy rebounds. Accept it. Then, think about how your news organization will likely be doing things five years from now and start moving in that direction. Now!

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