Business journalism and exploratory reporting: ABNW chapter five

(Above photo: the New York Times shows that business reporting can be as captivating as it is informative)

by Alex Hager

Although it may seem far less glamorous than profile writing or less exciting than investigative journalism, business reporting is an integral part of journalism. In fact, it can be just as entertaining as informative. Skillful storytellers can apply narratives to business reporting in a way that reinforces facts and also captivates readers.

Business reporters tread a fine line when telling informative stories. Hard facts are valuable, but can overwhelm a story if they dominate the narrative. Numbers can be pivotal to a business article, but will easily bore a reader in high quantities. To make the job more challenging, interesting narratives for business stories aren’t always as obvious as they would be in a profile story, despite being entirely necessary to provide an interesting platform in which to weave facts.

In fact, the need for quality business reporting that conveyed fact-heavy information to readers in a palatable way practically invented a new type of reporting called explanatory journalism. Explanatory journalism is the “first cousin” of business reporting, taking complicated concepts laden with information that might be confusing to a layman, and boiling the information down to its essence, explaining what is happening and how it might impact the reader.

Because of this nuanced and challenging job, business reporters are unsung heroes, in a way. Although they may not be weaving artful profiles rivaling novels or tackling corruption and wrongdoing through investigation, they wholeheartedly fulfill one of the primary roles of a journalist; to inform the public and shed light on the unknown.

Sometimes, if written well, business reporting can almost morph into narrative reporting. In this example, a story about Apple’s dealings with Chinese factories, the New York

A helpful infographic in Barboza’s story.Times’ David Barboza basically takes a business phenomenon and expands it into a more interesting profile story. By using people, places, and photos, Barboza illustrates the results of the interactions between American tech companies and their Chinese workers and manufacturing locations. The article is strewn with facts and figures, discussing costs to explain why those companies are in China, and laying out a bit of a timeline to explain when it all unfolded. Most importantly, though, the author embellishes a storyline of international tension, peppering in interesting photos and graphics to weave together a story that is, at its core, a description of a company seeking to make cost-cutting business deals.

This next article features far less flourish. This story from the Washington Post is a quick rundown of recently released quarterly earnings reports from a selection of retailers. Although it is less entertaining, it is highly informative and teaches us a few other lessons about business journalism. This article, in its essence, it a list of percentages and dollar figures. Although the article adds little more in terms of prose, it adds much more in terms of context. By carefully selecting quotes from industry insiders and related information/data, the author adds historical relevance and makes sure that the data is understood by a layman in terms of scale and impact.

While profile-like business stories, and fact-heavy explanatory stories are probably the

The Wendy’s kiosks described in the Dispatch article.

most well-read of stories in any given business section, there is also a place for unsexy local business reporting that analyzes and informs, often on a smaller scale, and often
without heavy data or an interesting narrative plot. For example,
this story from JD Malone of the Columbus Dispatch, talks about the rollout of new automated ordering kiosks inside Wendy’s restaurants, a company
based in Columbus. The article is efficient and informative, hitting off on all of the five Ws of journalism right away, but delving deeper to provide background and context later on. Although there is no narrative or plot, there doesn’t need to be. The author includes a number of quotes from Wendy’s executives, as well as sales statistics. This article is everything a local business story needs to be.