Writing for Radio

By David Moskowitz
May 13, 2009 06:21 PM

Each morning, when I come into work at 5 a.m., my eyes sting as I sip my coffee and aggressively prowl the Internet for that day's torrent of business stories. Often historic in tone, I usually think, “"I can't make this stuff up. What a great time to be in business news!"

There are the stories about, “the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression” and “the biggest plummet in home prices in four decades.” And the salacious stories that sound fictitious, but are true: The 41-year-old CFO of mortgage giant Freddie Mac hangs himself in the basement of his quaint, multi-million dollar Virginia home; the biggest ponzi scheme in world history is uncovered, an astronomical $65 billion; AIG, once the world's largest insurer by assets, has the largest quarterly loss in corporate history; The U.S. government "fires" the CEO of General Motors; and GM, AIG and Citigroup stock are less than the cost of a Big Mac.

The Story Line

Synthesizing this somewhat chaotic, seemingly endless stream of daily business news into cogent, concise and fifth-grader-understandable stories for radio can be challenging, but it is possible. I peruse as many news stories as I can on the Web to deliver the simple story line.

A typical story line reads:

Dow and S&P futures are down before the opening bell as investors fear the global spread of the swine flu, insolvency of banks' balance sheets - despite positive first quarter earnings, and higher than expected unemployment claims of 646,000 for the week of April 27th ... a 26-year high.

That's it. Just three items. Easy to read. Easy to grasp, and briefly summarizes what's happening in our global economy. You're painting a picture with words. But keep in mind, your story line will constantly evolve throughout the day with new stories and breaking news.

Learning to write short and concise is key. Explaining difficult business concepts concisely takes practice and providing context is always a must. In the example above, a “26-year high” is a concise but descriptive way to give the listener perspective. Be cautious however of overusing numbers if not needed.  A 30-sec news read chalk full of numbers and percentages, will be lost on your audience.

How do you pick the stories for your story line? When I wrote for the Las Vegas Business Journal, I learned a simple but often forgotten tactic: lead with stories that affect the most people. Flush the "If it bleeds, it leads" concept. That's an old school cliché and a big time tune out.

Interconnection

In the financial world, virtually everything is interrelated. Typically oil goes up when the U.S. dollar goes down. Government issued bond interest rates go up when U.S. Treasury bill prices go down. When the unemployment rate increases, foreclosures, bankruptcies and credit card defaults increase, there's less tax revenue and consumer spending decreases…

You get the idea.

Educate yourself on these relationships. Knowledge of how the financial system works will subsequently give your stories greater depth.

Voraciously read, listen and watch business news. Talk to as many people in the financial world as you can. And don't be afraid to ask questions. Nobody was born with this information.

The world of business definitely has its own language, but the end goal is the same as it is for other beats. You are here to tell a story. And I've found covering business news in print and now for radio can be fun, highly educational and incredibly stimulating.

Business will always be relevant to people's lives.

And remember, you’ve got a front row seat to witness history.

David Moskowitz is the Morning News Anchor and Managing Editor on 1510-AM KFNN, Financial Newsradio in Phoenix. He also wrote for the Las Vegas Business Journal. David can be reached at dmoskowitz@cox.net.

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