Develop Your Brand

By Jeff Bailey
March 26, 2009 04:34 PM

Amid all the grim news about declining circulation and once-great newspapers going out of business, there was the tiniest hint of something positive for working reporters when the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism released its 2009 edition of “The State of the News Media.”

“Power is shifting to the individual journalist and away, by degrees, from journalistic institutions,” the report declared, calling this one of six new trends emerging in 2009.

What does this mean for business reporters? Editors can’t boss us around anymore? They have to run our stories at length? We can file for overtime when we work late?

Sadly, none of those things seems likely to occur. Rather, Pew said that some of us who actually create the content are rising, in some ways, in the esteem of readers: “The trend is still forming and its potential is uncertain but the signs are clear. Through search, e-mail, blogs, social media and more, consumers are gravitating to the work of individual writers and voices, and away somewhat from institutional brand.”

Brand, of course, is one of those marketing words that has insinuated itself everywhere these days. You or a colleague has probably remarked at some point, self-mockingly, that your efforts to get your stories read and noticed are self-branding. Well, you don’t have to use the term. But unless you’re 100 percent certain that your employer is going to survive -- and that you’ll be kept on even as others are let go -- it is time for many of us to embrace the concept of self-branding. Making ourselves personally known for what we do, rather than merely being an unseen cog in the wheel known as the Morning Bugle.

The best-known self-branded journalists, or quasi-journalists, of course, are already working outside traditional media outlets. Think Perez Hilton. Arianna Huffington.

And, thankfully, others. “Journalists who have left legacy news organizations are attracting funding to create their own websites. Experiments like GlobalPost are testing whether individual journalists can become independent contractors offering reporting to various sites, in much the way photographers have operated for years at magazines,” the Pew report notes. “It would be a mistake to overstate the movement at this point. But for a few journalists at least, there are signs of a new prospect: individual journalists, funded by a mix of sources, offering expert coverage to many places.”

The good news is you don’t have to quit your job to get started on self-branding. There are great examples of self-branding at virtually every publication: your best sports columnist is probably known widely by name in your city; you may have a fiery Op-Ed columnist whom readers love or loathe. That’s self-branding, and it probably enhances their employment prospects should the Bugle fold.

But how does a lowly beat reporter on the business staff achieve self-branding? Often, it seems, by grabbing a beat and pursuing it passionately and in a very personal way. Walt Mossberg, The Wall Street Journal’s powerful and well-paid personal technology columnist, was a quite-mortal reporter and editor at the paper before devoting himself to tech. He could now certainly leave The Journal and make a fabulous living elsewhere, but he doesn’t have to. The paper needs him and pays him handsomely to stick around.

The Journal has other reporters-turned-columnists who dominate a topic. Scott McCartney’s column, The Middle Seat is a must read for business travelers. And though his field of reporting is crowded, McCartney is usually far ahead of the pack. As is Sue Shellenbarger in her Work and Family column.

Granted, all three of these people had the platform of The Wall Street Journal to build their personal brands upon. But each one built the column – and its following – from scratch. They weren’t handed an existing franchise. And even The Journal’s huge influence wouldn’t have made them successful if each hadn’t developed a compelling column. All three do fabulous reporting – they’re not just sounding off.

Deciding how to self-brand is similar to deciding which beat to cover, except you’re more concerned with readers than with editors. Which industry employs the most people – not just any people, but educated people who want information -- in your market? What do those employees – and don’t forget customers and suppliers – want to know? Is the local industry part of a wider national or international scene hungry for information? In other words, who are your customers and what can you sell them?

Your editor isn’t offering you a column, you say? But he or she probably is encouraging you to blog. And the pithy entries of a blog – what you choose to link and how you wisecrack about it – can resemble the voice of a columnist. Do what Mossberg, McCartney and Shellenbarger did. Find an under-covered or poorly-covered area of business that needs an expert and become that expert.

During the early 1990s, by doing a few features on trash-hauling companies, by default I became The Wall Street Journal’s environmental industry reporter. Trash. Hazardous waste. Incinerators. Recycling. A little organized crime. It wasn’t very glamorous. But I had the industry pretty much to myself. And, oddly, I got tons of phone calls and letters (this was before e-mail). The garbage industry wanted attention. It wanted a blog. Sad to say, there weren’t blogs then, either, or I would have started one and today I’d be self-branded.

Jeff Bailey, a former Wall Street Journal and New York Times reporter, writes for national business magazines. He lives in Chicago.

Please enter your friend's e-mail address

Please enter your e-mail address

If you would like to include a message, please add it here:

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