Engaging Enterprise

By Kelly Carr
January 23, 2009 12:51 PM

Several years ago, while working on an enterprise story about a young funeral home director, I was curious why Jacob, a man in his 20s with no family connections to the industry would be interested in such a job. For weeks, I followed him through the particulars of his day, collecting unique insight into the industry. As he worked, and I watched, the information I compiled continued to mount.

With any enterprise project, you need to have an organizational system in place. Mine was a diary, a simple word document on my computer. Each day, I came back to the office and charted every detail I could remember or any research I had completed. When it came time to write the Sunday enterprise story, I sifted through each day and pieced it all together. But there was so much information left over, so many parts of the process that just couldn’t fit into a print story.

The reporting for this story unfolded just as blogs gained popularity and newsrooms were beginning to explore multimedia components for storytelling. At this point, the standard process for an enterprise story went something like this: reporters compiled everything they could for months, sometimes years, and then published the final product for readers in print.

Today, the media landscape has changed. Reporters have less time and shrinking news holes. Journalists are competing with expert bloggers, fast-paced online breaking news sites and niche Web publications. The advancement of online tools and multimedia storytelling components allows us to revisit and better develop the enterprise process. There are some cases where reporters can afford to sit on information for a long time as they compile a comprehensive investigative piece, but now in this current climate, that may not always be the best option.

Reporters and editors must embrace enlightened enterprise reporting.

Think of the story as a vehicle that is perpetually alive and unfolding. Understand that the reporting and the details you are gathering are in many ways quite valuable in their own right. Realize that not every aspect of the story should be held from public view until the crafting of a final 5,000 word piece, that there are many simple facts or parts to the story that you could share with readers as your reporting progresses. So what’s the tangible result of this shift in thinking?

Let’s take the Asbury Park Press’ “The Jersey Squeeze” and the Pensacola News Journal’s“Frugal Family” as a starting point. Both papers took a subject – the economy and how it affects their residents – and devoted a separate Web page to continuing coverage. While I’ll argue that the publications could have taken this concept a step further through interactive graphics and other online tools, devoting a specific page with consistent updates that in sum make up the bigger picture is what’s important.

The Wall Street Journal has several Web pages devoted to coverage of specific big stories and they are easily identified through tabs at the top of the homepage, allowing easy access for readers. For example, The Journal recently devoted pages to the stimulus package and the coverage of the Bernard Madoff scandal. On the Madoff page, readers have access to continuing coverage of the fraud case. They can even search through a victim’s list and click through an interactive graphic on Madoff’s friends.

The Madoff page is constantly evolving as new details unfold, which makes it a solid example of interactive enterprise. The Journal is not withholding all details until they publish a massive project; instead, they have used the landing page as a way to give the story a pulse of its own on a daily basis. Readers no longer have to search for past stories or additional data; it’s all in one spot. And they are learning about the Madoff scandal right along with The Journal.

This type of storytelling would have served many of my own past enterprise projects well if I had taken a moment to truly realize all of the benefits. For the funeral home story, snippets of my day from the dairy would have made an interesting reporter’s notebook on the story’s own Web page. Through interactive graphics and other elements like video or slideshows, I could have established a more comprehensive grasp on the business of funeral homes and let readers into the inner-belly of the story. It’s easy to argue now that the story could have better served readers if it was split into chunks; if it unfolded as it progressed.

Admittedly, this method does not work in every case. There are times when a reporter must work the story behind the veil to completely understand all components before sharing with readers. This avoids mistakes and eliminates the chance of losing the big story. But there are also are good opportunities to treat an enterprise project as a specimen that has its own heartbeat. Many times devoting a specific Web page or section on a site where information unfolds over time is the best choice. This treatment allows readers to come along for the ride.

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Copyright © 2009 Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism