Crafting Columns

By Henry Dubroff
February 20, 2009

At their best, columns give a voice to business journals, they engage in bigger issues and add tremendous value for readers. And columns give staff the opportunity to expand beyond reporting and into analysis.

Having written a general business column for business journals for nearly 15 years, I’ve evolved some thoughts on to handle columns on the business end and how to write one.

My first piece of advice: Stay away from contributed columns that serve as thinly disguised marketing. Many professionals look to the business journal as an opportunity for a “placement” of editorial content, but these marketing pieces need to be avoided. But, on the other hand, in every market there are business people who like to write and who are good at it.

With some careful editing their contributions can help readers understand nitty-gritty issues such as succession planning in family business or the latest trends in job interviewing. Content generated by readers also can really liven up a business journal’s editorial page.

But most columns in business journals are written by staff.

It’s almost always better when a column “comes off the news.” The editor’s analysis of a hot local issue or a big deal that’s just been announced can add a lot of perspective expanding on reporting in that issue of the newspaper and discussing longer-range impact.

The tone of the column should be conversational. It’s always better to write as though you were engaged in a lively discussion with an average reader. It’s OK to convey emotion but no lectures or hectoring, please.

Anchor your thoughts in facts. Dollars, numbers of jobs, total bankruptcy filings are critical to establishing the credibility of your column. But unless you are doing a step-by-step dissection of a deal, don’t get lost in the numbers.

Columns are best when they engage in analysis, describe impact, tell the back story or perhaps, point out ways to solve a community or business problem. Hey, it’s OK to rant occasionally against the unfairness of the bank bailouts or the excesses on Wall Street. Those egregious practices touched a collective raw nerve. But more often than not you want to make the column more nuanced and more multi-dimensional.

When you are writing on a topic of the day, you want to give credit to others on staff for their contributions to advancing the story. And you really want to be careful about attribution on quotes and phrases. There is a really fine line between acknowledging that a quote appeared elsewhere and plagiarism.

Speaking of plagiarism, many columnists, including some close friends, have been caught up in this trap and their careers ended because they forgot to add proper attribution to quotes and paraphrases. Your readers want to know that you read and get ideas from The Economist or BusinessWeek or other publications that might have sparked an idea.

Find a sounding board. At every publication where I’ve ever worked, I have found somebody in the newsroom who could engage me in a five minute conversation where I could bounce ideas for the column around.

Don’t be afraid to do a little reporting.  If you are the editor, you can probably reach people unlikely to return reporters’ phone calls, but make sure you work with the reporters to avoid crossing paths. Having some original material for a column is always a good idea.

Finally, here’s some advice from Gil Spencer, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and my former boss at The Denver Post. He had one simple rule for column writing. No matter how hard you are on the subject of a column, and he could be vicious, give them credit for something. It can take the sting out of a piece and set the stage for sources to call back, leading to more great columns.

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