The Society for Advancing Business and Editing Writing (SABEW) held its annual conference in Washington, D.C. from April 3 through April 5, 2025, where journalists, newsroom leaders, and students from across the country attended to learn from and connect with their fellow colleagues in business journalism.
The Reynolds Center had the opportunity to attend this informative event and share some key takeaways from the various panels and trainings.
Covering powerful people in your local community
Even if you’re not covering Elon Musk and the world’s billionaires, oligarchs, and plutocrats, you can still cover impactful stories about the misuse of power by taking a deeper look at the influential figures in your local community.
Emily Glazer from The Wall Street Journal recommends checking the Bloomberg or Forbes billionaires indexes to figure out who is based in your state and familiarizing yourself with the spaces that these influential people frequent and who they surround themselves with.
In the same vein, Joe Miller from the Financial Times encouraged reporters to look into what media they consume, their beliefs, and their lifestyles. It can take months, sometimes years to form these connections with powerful players in your community and those in their network – and even longer to build a deep understanding of what makes them tick.
Aside from looking into the wealthiest individuals in your state, Miller noted that political donors for state, local, and national candidates are also great sources when covering stories about local abuse of power. Furthermore, look at Chamber of Commerce honorees and the most prominent philanthropists in your area, as they have the potential to become key sources.
Teddy Schleifer from The New York Times emphasized that reporting on the richest and most influential people in your city or state can have a considerable local impact as these stories often come with a built-in audience who is already familiar with the area’s prominent players.
Leveling up your human sourcing
Whether you’re covering the richest person in town or a small business owner, maintaining a healthy and active source pipeline is crucial for any business story.
When it comes to sourcebuilding, The Wall Street Journal’s Glazer encouraged journalists to play the long game as you won’t always get a scoop from an interview. More often, it’s about building relationships that allow you to get more information and access down the road. Forming these long-standing relationships helps you better understand the “chatter” in the industry to show other sources that you’re in-the-know and worth talking to.
Glazer also noted that, in her experience, there are a lot of people who know more than you may think they do. Don’t forget about the mid-level employees or even interns who may have access to valuable information and very different motivations from their higher-ups.
When you’re having a slow week, E.B. Solomont from The Wall Street Journal said it’s valuable to check in with old sources. Remembering key details about their personal lives and keeping organized notes about your previous conversations is a great way to stay on top of these relationships.
Being of value to your sources is another effective way to maintain a reciprocal line of communication with your sources. Offer them something – not gifts or services – but rather information. Share information that may be valuable in their sphere, even if it’s unrelated to the story you’re pursuing.
Tips for successful FOIA requests on the business beat
While sourcebuilding is an art, submitting successful Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for your business stories is a complex science.
For Ziva Branstetter, Senior Editor at ProPublica, the key to successful FOIA requests is being relentless. FOIAs have the potential to reveal harm and allow reporters to hold specific people and agencies accountable, so the patience and tenacity the process requires is often worth it. Branstetter has perfected her records request process over many years and shared the breakdown in her FOIA tip sheet.
David Cuillier, director of the Joseph L. Brechner Freedom of Information Project at the University of Florida, shared his own tip sheet on how to get access to government records about businesses.
Jason Leopold, senior investigative reporter at Bloomberg News, said that submitting a well-prepared and researched FOIA request is an important first step, but you really need to prepare yourself for the appeal process. This process requires persistence, knowing your rights as a citizen and reporter, and being willing to involve lawyers if financially feasible.
Leopold also shared a helpful resource – his newsletter FOIA Files reveals new documents obtained from government agencies every week.
Business reporting outside of the newsroom
You don’t need to work at a newsroom to submit a business FOIA request. In fact, you don’t need to work in a newsroom to be a business reporter.
Dwindling budgets in newsrooms and audiences’ desire to get their news from individuals they can connect with instead of organizations has led some journalists to pursue alternative ways of reporting, such as Substack, a platform where “writers and creators can publish their work and make money from paid subscriptions while supporters can directly sustain the work they deeply value.”
Joseph Politano is an economic data journalist who exclusively publishes his work on his Substack newsletter Apricitas Economic, which has over 62,000 subscribers. He attributes the popularity of Substack in journalism to consumers’ growing mistrust of large media corporations.
While Substack has become Politano’s full-time job, he emphasized that it’s not for everyone and that it will likely require a good amount of upfront time investment with little financial return.
Politano recommended focusing on making great free content so that people are incentivized to buy the paid version of your newsletter. The free articles are essentially advertisements for the paid content that you create.
Other reporters have gone to Ghost, an open-source blog and newsletter platform that’s more customizable than Substack. Brian Morrissey, CEO of The Rebooting, is one of them.
Morrissey listed flexibility, autonomy, and ownership over your own stories as the greatest advantages to pursuing alternative routes such as Substack or Ghost for your reporting career. However, setting deadlines and even hiring someone to keep you on track may be necessary to maintain a consistent publishing schedule outside a newsroom.
Leveraging social media
Whether you work for a news organization or for yourself, using social media as a reporting tool is indispensable in getting your reporting to your audience.
Jade Lawson, multimedia journalist at 7News, stressed the importance of thinking about how your story will be presented across platforms before ever stepping foot at the scene.
Social media feeds and algorithms are also a key part of the equation. Charla Freeland from The Washington Post said to think about each platform’s feed before choosing where to share what coverage. Is the feed chronological? Does it cycle content from weeks ago? For more evergreen stories, go to Instagram or TikTok. For fast-moving stories, go to X (formerly Twitter) or BlueSky.
A good social media post depends entirely on the platform, but overall, a successful news post will anticipate people’s questions and answer them. It will provide enough information for the audience to walk away accurately informed.
And, while algorithms are unpredictable and constantly changing, it’s helpful to keep your news posts timely and consistent for the best results.
Katie Vogel, politics and D.C. editor at The Associated Press, added that a well-done social media post in the news industry is one that can stand alone as a piece of journalism that you and your organization can stand behind.
In a time where mistrust toward institutional news media is prevalent, Jeff Stain, chief economic correspondent at The Washington Post, also sees value in turning to social media. If you can humanize yourself and allow people to get to know you as a person, he says, that has the capacity to puncture the suspicion of the faceless person behind an institution.
