Intelligent Perspectives

By Dick Weiss
June 2, 2008

Explanatory journalism is one of the most valuable tasks those writing business news can practice. The public wants and needs to know how things came to such a state with a particular business or industry or where things are headed.

Three papers, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the Houston Chronicle, provide great examples of this genre with insights into the funeral home industry, bio-fuels and restaurants.

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Note: Each headline contains a link so you can read the stories online. Some sites will require you to register first. It's worth taking the time.

3 Bio-debatable: Food vs. Fuel
Lisa Stiffler of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Newspapers provide their readers with a useful service when they prepare them for important events... Stiffler does this admirably with this scene-setting story about the debate over biodiesel in advance of a major conference on the subject in Seattle. Like many good business stories, Stiffler's employs multiple reporting disciplines, including science, environment and economics. And she brings home a global issue to her readers by extensively localizing the topic.

2 Swallowing Higher Costs
David Kaplan of the Houston Chronicle
Kaplan wrote this story for the Mother's Day edition to explain why readers taking Mom out to a small restaurant would be finding changes on the dinner table. Higher costs of raw ingredients have forced restaurants to make adjustments that range from baking their own goods to raising menu prices. Notice how Kaplan is able to make his story appeal to both the business reader and the average consumer by discussing financial and marketing concepts along with bread-and-butter matters.

1Big Dreams Buried By Big Questions
Todd Frankel of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Frankel follows up here on the paper's episodic reports on a troubled provider of "pre-need" funeral services. Frankel had to work around the difficulty of the main subject's refusal to be interviewed, except to have his questions answered by an attorney. He also had to deal with the problem of investigators being stumped by various aspects of how the operation worked. Frankel handles that obstacle by following a basic rule too often overlooked by reporters: When an obvious question arises and you cannot get the answer, level with the reader. Say, essentially, "Dear Reader: We know you wonder about this. We do, too. But we just cannot get the answer." It leaves the reader so much less frustrated and actually gives your story more credibility.

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