Resolutions to Ring in the New Year

By Chris Roush
Dec. 4, 2007

December is the time when a lot of people think about making changes to their life, and they vow that those changes will begin on the first day of the next year with their New Year’s resolutions.

I’ve never been good with resolutions, whether they’re wanting to lose some weight to going to the gym to play basketball more often to spending less time on the computer.

But if I were a business journalist, here are some resolutions that I would be seriously considering to ring in the new year right:

1. I vow never to let my personal feelings appear to sully my coverage, or my paper’s coverage. Case in point is Chicago Sun-Times business editor Dan Miller, who allowed a foundation last month use his name to ask journalists to consider that global warming may not actually be occurring. Miller once worked for the foundation, but he should have never gotten involved with the campaign now that he’s a journalist. His actions will now lead others to question his paper’s coverage of global warming.
2. I vow to tap into the possibilities of the Internet more thoroughly. Whether it’s using online databases that will make more coverage more thorough or writing for the Web site of my employer or covering a beat using a blog, the Internet is the most dramatic force of change in business journalism today. Use it in all of its possibilities, or you risk getting left behind or getting stuck in a job you don’t want.
3. I promise to find a new source on my beat at least once a week. It doesn’t have to be a top executive or even a high-ranking official at the companies on my beat, but all business journalists could expand to whom they talk to on their beat, no matter how good they are. They don’t need to be people whom you’ll quote in your stories, but they do need to be people who know something about the companies and the industries you write about and are willing to share that information.
4. I promise to understand the numbers that I’m using in my stories. There’s still too many business stories where numbers are used incorrectly, whether it’s mixing percent with percentage points, mean with media or comparing numbers that aren’t comparable. Take a refresher math course, like the online one offered by the Reynolds Center here. If you’re not good with numbers and you’re a business journalist, then you’re not a good business journalist.
5. I will check my facts more carefully so my stories don’t contain any embarrassing mistakes. Underline every number and every name, and every fact and then check them against the original source before you turn in your story. That should dramatically decrease mistakes, including those that go uncorrected.

And with that, I wish everyone a Happy New Year and the best of luck in business journalism in 2008.

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