The Elements of Business Journal Style

By Henry Dubroff
April 8, 2009

During the past 20 years, business journals have evolved from narrowly- focused legal or real estate publications to the mainstream of community-based financial news.

That’s meant a constant evolution in the business journal’s style, away from the ultra-specialized jargon of commercial property or bankruptcy courts and toward language that’s more accessible to the average small-business owner or management professional.

Indeed, the near collapse of in-depth business reporting in daily newspapers has put business journals in the spotlight.

The biggest struggle is to not overreach. Most times, what readers want from a business journal is a lot of information, some of it fairly complicated, conveyed in a way that is simple in both grammar and use of language.

Most times the business journal’s style begins with a sense of place.

At our newspaper, Pacific Coast Business Times, we cover an area roughly 200 miles long and 200 yards wide along California’s central coast. We try to avoid the word “local” in a general sense because most of the trends we write about are more regional in nature. We try to convey a bit of detail if we are writing about one of our smaller communities, especially mentioning the county where it is located and maybe a factoid or two to reinforce a sense of place.

A second key element of business journal style is conveying a sense of time.

Being a weekly, we want to be specific about dates and avoid words such as yesterday, today, tomorrow or even a specific day of the week, since we don’t know exactly when a reader will pick up our newspaper—either in print or online. The Economist serves as one of our best models for providing a sense of time.

A third concept in business journal style is readability, especially when it comes to acronyms. We are constantly striking a balance between the acronyms that are familiar to a broad business audience and those that are so industry-specific they confuse the reader.

Everybody in our region knows that University of California Santa Barbara is UCSB, and virtually all of our readers recognize an even more specialized moniker such as VCEDA, the Ventura County Economic Development Association. It’s fine to use these on second reference. But there are many acronyms that don’t travel nearly as well, and I encourage my staff to avoid them.

Using “the company” or “the program” or “the UCSB initiative” works just as well as constantly referring to UCSB’s Venture Acceleration Initiative as “VAI.” The idea is to not force the reader to go backwards to figure out what the acronym means.

When it comes to information, it’s important to recognize that readers really want some of the nitty-gritty details—a story about a big commercial real estate lease should tell whether common area fees and utilities are included.

Also, even if it is at the bottom of the story, readers want to know the names of the brokers and lawyers on both sides of a big transaction.

And never forget that business people want to know the price of everything, especially when it comes to stocks, bonds or commercial property.

One of my pet peeves about business journals is that the writers are quick to mix metaphors. Another is letting really long quotes convey information that could be explained  more economically outside of quotation marks. Also, if using humor, writers and columnists must be careful to signal it, i.e. “with tongue planted firmly in cheek.”

Finally, it’s vital to get the style and tone of your publication right for your community.

A good way to think about tone is to just take a walk around your central business district at lunchtime. If everybody is wearing Hawaiian shirts, cargo shorts and skinny jeans, you probably are going to want an informal set of style rules. But if the crowd is wearing suits and ties, you might want to be a bit more formal. Either way, I think courtesy titles are a bit over the top.

At the Pacific Coast Business Times, our style is a bit of a hybrid. I have walked down to the corner and, amid a sea of tank tops and flip flops, bumped into Freddy Couples neatly attired in a golf shirt and khaki slacks.  I’ve also observed Professor Alan Heeger, one of our UCSB Nobel Prize winners, looking like an elfish version of Johnny Cash—dressed all in black.

Finding a style that appeals to area’s business celebrities, CEOs and dealmakers is not easy and it’s a bit of a moving target. But keep at it and you will produce a business journal that’s both informative and a great read.

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