Storytelling that Sticks

By Jeff Bailey
March 16, 2009 02:45 PM

We’re in the midst of the biggest economic story since the Depression, which is a great opportunity for business reporters and their publications to engage readers. Yet, in many instances, our coverage is numbing more than enlightening.

As a group, business reporters have come to rely too heavily on significance, often at the expense of storytelling.

Thus, large numbers (billions, or even trillions of dollars) + big corporate names (General Electric, Wal-Mart, Microsoft, Citigroup) + business icons (Buffett, Gates, Immelt, Bernanke) + a news development, even a marginal one = prominent display and assumed reader interest.

And if the story needs a little something extra, we add in a signal to the reader that some special understanding is contained within, though it’s clearly hype: markets haven’t yet reacted to this news; only now becoming appreciated. In other words, this is a better story than you might think it is.

I think the reader is becoming worn out from this approach - not unlike reader and audience fatigue from such foreign stories as Mideast unrest.  It can all seem like a nasty tape loop.

Happily, there have been some fine examples of storytelling in recent weeks that brought the economic mess down to the human scale. I’ve heard far too many journalists, especially editors, over the years refer to such articles as “human interest stories,” suggesting they’re a welcomed secondary component of coverage, but that the important stuff is the big numbers and big names. I disagree.  Readers of The Wall Street Journal will better remember this page one story by Julie Jargon, a Chicago-based reporter, than they will the umpteenth story out of Washington on the still-uncertain shape of the banking bailout.

On Front Lines of Debt Crisis, Luggage Maker Fights for Life
By Julie Jargon
9 January 2009
The Wall Street Journal
(Copyright (c) 2009, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.)

ST. PAUL, Minn. -- When Chuck Bidwell and Jennifer Guarino took over J.W. Hulme Co. a few years ago, their plan was to transform the tiny maker of duck-hunting gear and fishing-rod bags into a luxury luggage company.

They applied the modern American business playbook: Borrow heavily to grow fast. The strategy worked -- until the credit crisis threw out those rules.

Now the two business partners are struggling to pull their company, and their lives, out of a spiral. The pain is rippling through a broad circle of investors, employees, suppliers and family members.

Mr. Bidwell, a 63-year-old serial entrepreneur and collector of vintage Buicks, is selling his beloved cars, is about to lose his house and is getting divorced from his wife of less than two years, partly due to their financial nightmare. Ms. Guarino has drained her savings, had her credit cards shut off, and is fielding phone calls "weekly," she says, from a frustrated relative who loaned her money.
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The story above succeeds because Jargon a) got fabulous cooperation from her subjects and b) the subjects are entrepreneurs with a lot to lose personally, not some corporate hired hands insulated from economic pain. The story doesn’t need billions of dollars and thousands of people to bring home the consequences of the credit crunch.

Even in good economic times, business reporters would be wise to build more industry stories around smaller companies and entrepreneurs. The scale of their businesses is easier for readers to grasp. They’re more likely to be forthcoming with you about their problems and concerns, as opposed to the well-coached corporate executive constantly putting the best face on even the worst of times. And they’re collectively very important, accounting for a huge percentage of new jobs in upturns and also a large portion of eliminated jobs in downturns.

How many giant companies would let you close enough to pull off a reporting feat like Tim Aeppel’s piece on layoffs? Aeppel, who covers manufacturing for The Wall Street Journal, has been mining smaller companies, and seemingly-forgotten large ones, for years to write smart pieces about the industry and the economy.

Scenes From a Layoff: Tears Flow Among the Kilns at a Tiny Tile Maker --- David Eick Makes the Cut, His Wife Doesn't; 'I Don't Need the Internet,' Ms. Dangelo Quips
By Timothy Aeppel
27 January 2009
The Wall Street Journal
(Copyright (c) 2009, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.)

MINERVA, Ohio -- Workers at Summitville Tiles Inc. gathered on the factory floor Wednesday morning to hear their boss -- using a bullhorn to pierce the cavernous space -- tell them he was laying off a third of the staff.

To pull through this crisis, owner David Johnson said, the company must "cut to the bone."

Huddled around half-century-old kilns for warmth, some workers masked their anxiety with nervous optimism. "I'll go back to hang drywall," said Dustin Bourne, a lanky 22-year-old, chatting with three high-school buddies. Of course, they all knew the truth: Mr. Bourne took a job here last year because drywall work had disappeared.

Rosanne Dangelo, a mother of two grown children, was stoic at the prospect of unemployment. "I'll get by," she said, then quipped, "I don't need the Internet."

The U.S. is losing jobs at a pace not seen since the 1940s. Monday alone, 65,000 fresh layoffs were announced at giants including Caterpillar and Home Depot.

But tiny firms like Summitville Tiles have an outsized role in employment. For the past decade, small businesses have created 60% to 80% of net new jobs. Small companies of 500 or fewer people employ more than half of the country's private-sector workers.
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You can do an industry story by pulling in the latest results from the biggest companies and succinctly wrapping them around the flesh-and-blood of real people from a smaller company in the industry. Often, the little-company people – suppliers, customers, competitors – will tell you more about the biggest companies than those outfits will themselves.

For lists and other resources that can help you find these smaller companies, see this earlier BusinessJournalism
column. Industry associations can help, too.

Don’t get me wrong: we need daily coverage and more on the banking bailout, on AIG, on the use of TARP funds. But for most readers, these stories blur into one another over time. The luggage maker’s troubles and the tile maker’s layoffs, however, will stick with readers.

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

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