Deliver Unique Reporting Angles to Readers this Holiday Season

By Chris Roush
November 13, 2006

With the holiday shopping season right around the corner, here is what's on my wish list: Retail shopping stories that take unusual angles to what has become a tried and often boring story.

Let's face it, the typical business desk will run a shopping story on the front page on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, and it will be based on sending a reporter out into the masses at the local malls, talking to shoppers. I've written this story more times than I care to remember, and I'm sure every other current and former retail reporter remembers such stories with a certain dread.

How can a business desk put some pizzazz into their holiday shopping coverage? Here are six ideas to fill your stocking:

1. Instead of a round-up story about what shopping is like on the day after Thanksgiving, what about focusing on that crazed lunatic shopper who is in front of her local Target at 5 a.m. and then hits the malls when the doors open there at 6? Follow her around for the day and see how a "pro" handles the day.

2. Take a look at the shopping season from another perspective -- that of a store manager. Why does all of the coverage focus solely on consumers when these are the people who are making sure that the shelves remain stocked and the cash registers are manned?

3. Look for businesses beside retail that derive a large portion of their revenue and profits during the six weeks between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day. In college, I worked for a Honey Baked Ham store, glazing and wrapping hams. If I remember correctly, that store did 60% of its business in November and December.

4. Don't write about Internet shopping as some new craze that's going to dramatically change retailing. It's now a decade old. If you're going to write about online shoppers, find a new angle other than how neat it is to fill a shopping cart on a PC screen. Find out if there's a warehouse in your area, for example, that fills these orders, and talk to those workers.

5. The best stories about retail occur after the holidays. A story that landed me on the front page of The Tampa Tribune back in the early 1990s was when I spent the day riding around on a garbage truck on Dec. 26. Why? That day is to sanitation workers what the day after Thanksgiving is to store employees.

6. Speaking of Dec. 26, it's a big shopping day as well for those bargain hunters in your community. Find one who is shopping for presents for next year. They're slightly crazy, but they make for a good story that few cover.

After all, it's not too early to start thinking about ways to make your holiday retail shopping coverage better in 2007.

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