Airline Beat Reporters Focus on Audience

By Ryan Basen
September 27, 2005 10:00 AM

After a mechanics union strike and a bankruptcy filing, The Star-Tribune's business desk in Minneapolis has made monitoring locally based Northwest Airlines a top priority.

About a dozen reporters at that newspaper have teamed to cover the story, especially in the week after Northwest and Delta Airlines announced they were filing for bankruptcy on the same day, Sept. 14.

They, and other business journalists covering the bankruptcy filings, have directed the focus of their coverage based primarily on one factor: what they perceive their audience to be. Some have targeted local business travelers and airline employees, while others are aiming for a wider readership.

The Star-Tribune has adopted the latter approach, says Eric Wieffering, a deputy business editor. The paper's goal is to focus on enterprise reporting, as it attempts to explain to its overall readers what Northwest's strengths and weaknesses are, compare them to those of other airlines and predict how that will affect Northwest should it emerge from bankruptcy.

The paper is pushing many of those Northwest stories onto A1, seeking to attract more average readers to join business section regulars.

Northwest is central to the lives of all Minneapolis residents, Wieffering says. And there is often a lull in important breaking news for bankruptcy cases immediately after the filing.

"There will be no shortage of breaking news" later, Wieffering says. "To some extent we're filling the gap" with broader analyses pieces and columns.

"Eighty percent of people who fly from or through here fly Northwest," he says. "It's an institution here and, because everyone flies it, interest goes beyond hard-core business readers."

Not every Twin Cities journalist agrees with that sentiment.

Marty Moylan, an airline reporter for the St. Paul Pioneer Press, targeted specific segments of the paper's readers with his Northwest coverage this week: Minnesota's businesspeople and Northwest employees and family.

Because bankruptcy stories tend to linger for a while, "the general public sometimes is like: 'Get back to me when it's really going to mean something,' " Moylan says. "(For) a lot of the general public, as long as the fares are good and the flights are on time, it's just noise to them."

But it's much more than noise to the more than 15,000 Northwest employees in Minnesota. "You cover it fairly intensively for them," Moylan says.

Rachel Tobin-Ramos, who covers the airline industry for the Atlanta Business Chronicle, serves a similar target audience in her Delta stories.

Ramos filed two news accounts recently for the Chronicle's Web site, as well as a detailed enterprise piece for the weekly print publication on the possibility of Southwest Airlines expanding its service in Atlanta.

"I'm planning to follow how Delta affects the health of the Atlanta economy," Ramos says, noting that Delta is Georgia's second-largest employer. "I think there's no more important story for us to cover."

Another key angle for business reporters to pursue, Moylan says, is what will happen to the entire troubled airline industry in the future. But Moylan thinks business reporters would be better off staying on top of the news rather than writing enterprise pieces that try to analyze so many unpredictable factors.

Despite their different approaches, Ramos, Moylan and Wieffering agree on one strategy.

"You've got to look for stories that would have the most impact," Moylan says, "the greatest news value."

Please enter your friend's e-mail address

Please enter your e-mail address

If you would like to include a message, please add it here:

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