Business journalism as defined by a student

I found this on the blog of a college student. I do not know the name of the college or the name of the student. But I thought this was an interesting definition of the business journalism course he/she is taking.

“To be honest, I know what business journalism is. I know it’s going to teach us how to write for the business section of broadsheets. It also means that we should have good command of English and be well endowed with technical economic terms. To put it profoundly, it means that I can’t score notable success in this fucking subject because I’m only familiar with the stupidest words in the language. Hell, I don’t even remember reading one single business article from the first to the last letter regardless how short. If somebody’s going to ask me to write something about it I guess I’m better off selling crack. I could only imagine the tireless resourcefulness of people who are in this vocation. Besides that, they must be mad boring people. Not that I’m not boring but…”

The entire posting can be found here.

I think I’ll ask the students in my Business Reporting class to define it next month on the first day.

Let me pose this question: Is this typical of what people considering going into journalism think about writing about business? Based on my experience, I think that’s the case, but then they’re pleasantly surprised after a semester of writing about people and digging through SEC filings that it’s actually kind of interesting.

I agree with the “tireless resourcefulness.” But the boring mad? Hey, not some of the crazy business journalists I know. Like the guy in Tampa who sat next to his fellow reporter and threatened to cut his red tie off because he’d worn it for too many days in a row. Or the guy in Tampa who chanted a reporter’s name loudly as his co-worker tried to make it through a phone interview.

Mad, yes. Boring, definitely not.