Looking on the Bright Side

By Chris Roush

May 5, 2008

There was a lot of discussion and hand wringing at the recent Society of American Business Editors and Writers annual conference about the future of business journalism. No less than Floyd Norris of The New York Times said it was the most downbeat SABEW conference he’s ever attended.

So why am I humming Monty Python’s “Always look on the bright side of life?” Because I came away from the event with the belief that we – and by “we” I mean all of business journalism – are headed in the right direction.

First, let’s get one thing out of the way. Journalists are notorious pessimists about everything. Business journalists are even worse because they see the qualitative and the quantitative. I fully expected everyone to be a Gloomy Gus, and I wasn’t disappointed.

So once I cut through all of the frowns and the nattering nabobs of negativity, I came away with a handful of thoughts and ideas that seemed to provide some of the answers to business journalism’s future.

Here is what I heard that caused me to whistle:

1. Cutting stock listings is the norm now, but one of the best ideas discussed at the conference was getting mutual fund companies to actually pay newspapers to run the prices of their funds. It’s apparently standard practice for European newspapers. Can you imagine the revenue that business sections would create if they started requiring payment for agate?
2. Some business editors are working with their paper’s advertising staffs to develop creative ways to generate revenue for the section. Two that I liked were sepia tone ads published over stock listings, and island ads that would run in the middle of a stock listings page.
3. Many business desks are cutting down on what they cover and becoming experts on specific topics that are important to their communities, thus becoming a mandatory destination read for those issues and companies. For example, the San Antonio Express-News covers AT&T, headquartered in the city, like you know what on a stick, but it’s leaving coverage of companies based in Houston, Dallas and Austin to the wires. I think that’s smart.
4. Hard-nosed business reporting will always win out every day. The Charlotte Observer, which has maintained a standalone business section and stock listings while bigger papers have cut both, won a number of SABEW’s Best in Business Awards for investigative projects. Is it any wonder that because readers look to it for what’s going on in the local business community, it keeps its space?
5. Daily blast e-mails of breaking news headlines are generating subscribers for the weekly business papers, even though they allow non-subscribers to sign up for the e-mail. Business sections of dailies do the same thing, but don’t seem to be generating subscribers as a result. Here’s a thought: Why not charge for the blast e-mail? Or, why can’t the dailies deliver just the business section (maybe as a PDF file also sent by e-mail) to some subscribers – at a reduced rate – who don’t want the rest of the paper?

Yes, these are not the best of times in business journalism. But I see and hear too many creative ideas to think that we’re headed for the bottom of the birdcage.

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