Bernie Kohn, assistant managing editor for business at the Baltimore Sun, became the president of the Society of American Business Editors and Writers in late April.
As a result, Kohn oversees the largest organization of business journalists in the country at a time when the field is in upheaval. Most newspapers have cut printed stock listings, and many of them are beginning to fold their standalone business section into other sections at the paper — at a time when business and economics news is rapidly becoming more important to readers.
Kohn, who first became a business editor when he joined the Tampa Tribune in 1997, has strong opinions about these issues and others. “In most metro newsrooms, business stories have no chance for equal presentation against cops, courts and school stories and other stories, simply because those metro bread-and-butter stories is what most top editors understand,” he says.
Kohn, who was also night business editor at the Washington Post and a business reporter at the Charlotte Observer, talked to Talking Biz News on Monday about his goals for SABEW and what he sees happening in business journalism. What follows is an edited transcript.
1. What first attracted you to business journalism?
I fell into it by happenstance. I was covering schools at a small paper in upstate New York, bored stiff and not performing all that well, when a job was posted by the one-man business staff looking to expand the staff to two. The editor had the reputation of being the best editor in the newsroom but a man who was impossible to please. It sounded like exactly the change of scenery and kick in the butt I needed.
So I put in for the job. I was the only applicant. I knew next to nothing about business; it was just something different to try. Twenty-four years later, I still see business journalism as THE place to write about money, sex and power – all at the same time! I couldn’t imagine still having that love if I was still a sportswriter — my first job — or education reporter.
2. How did you first get involved in SABEW?
Joining SABEW was one of the first things I did after becoming a business editor for the first time in 1997. SABEW conferences had a great reputation for leaving people jazzed about their work and being a great forum for meeting and networking with the best in our business. After I’d attended a couple of conferences, I was asked to help organize a fall personal finance conference. My involvement just accelerated from there. I know I am a better person and a better journalist for getting to know and work with the likes of Dave Kansas, Diana Henriques, Floyd Norris and Allan Sloan, to name just a few, on conferences and other SABEW matters. Great journalism; great people.
3. What can SABEW do for business journalism in the next year?
SABEW can equip you to survive. That’s what it’s about in this business for so many of our core members right now. I’ve never seen sense such imbalance between consumers’ need for financial and economic news and the willingness of newsrooms to keep investing in it. It’s even tough at a lot of electronic outlets. So what SABEW must do is equip our members to navigate this storm — through skills building, networking, and offering support and services to displaced journalists while establishing closer ties with the emerging leaders of our craft in online and other new media.
4. Are there certain types of business journalists that SABEW is reaching out to more than in the past?
While we’ve been working for a couple of years to bring more online, trade and broadcast journalists into the fold, we’re only now beginning a major effort to reach out to freelancers. This has been in demand for quite awhile, but now, career journalists are suddenly being thrown into freelancing by job cuts. That’s a scary thing, particularly if you’re trying to support a family that way. Look for special outreach not only on skills building but also help on how to run your own freelancing business.
5. A number of papers have cut their printed stock listings and recommended readers get this information on the Internet. Is that smart?
We’ve long since crossed the Rubicom on cutting the printed listings. What I object to is the persistent delusion that people accustomed to get their listings on the printed page will go to a newspaper’s own Web site as a substitute. Several years ago, AP found that the number of readers who went to a newspaper web site to get stocks information after losing it in their hometown daily was so small as to be statistically insignificant.
I’ve never figured out whether we’re trying to fool our readers or ourselves with PR-speak reader letters that talk about how this is all really better for you and that you can set up portfolio tools and such on our website. You’ve been able to do that on financial news sites for more than 10 years. Do we think our readers are morons? Understand that if you take listings out of the printed paper, you’re eliminating them period. Maybe that’s not such a terrible call given the choices we face. But we need to acknowledge, to both readers and ourselves, that that is what we are doing.
6. Some metro dailies are also cutting their standalone business sections. What does that mean for business journalism?
Business journalism is, unfortunately, being bifurcated in traditional newsrooms. I feel like Dana Carvey doing his old George H.W. Bush impersonation: consumer journalism “good, good!”; straight business news “bad, bad!” In the profession, we know that a deep understanding of business and economics is what makes great consumer journalism possible. Broadcast gets it, by and large, and online is very good and getting better. But in the traditional print world, business journalism is rapidly being split into evergreen news-you-can-use for the feature sections and online (good, good!) and news about the economy and businesses (bad, bad!! or boring, boring!!) In most metro newsrooms, business stories have no chance for equal presentation against cops, courts and school stories and other stories, simply because those metro bread-and-butter stories is what most top editors understand.
In this environment, readers face the prospect of being bombarded with dumbed-down, man-on-the-street, user-generated content about gas prices rather than intelligent, probing enterprise about why energy markets have left things as they are. It’s disappointing because many business sections get higher readership than sports sections. But sports gets the tire- and strip-club ads.
7. How can SABEW communicate that business journalism is important to all readers, not just executives and managers?
SABEW, through its members, must extend its reach further beyond printed members to online — not just pure online plays but also newspaper web sites. The surest way to preserving business news in struggling newsrooms is to make sure it plays on the Web. Which it will — if it’s written and presented in smart and engaging ways and also consistently hits a bulls eye on hot button topics.
8. What do you see as the biggest issue for business journalists today?
Business reporters must be equipped today to provide the kind of smart reporting that other journalists can’t provide. To the extent that business reporters are still trying to work around a fear of numbers, SEC statements and knowledge of economics, you must overcome that, now, or you’ll quickly blend into the crowd of ordinary reporters fighting for jobs.
9. What are your goals as SABEW president?
It’s equipping our members to be survivors, for now, and build the skills, confidence and contacts for them to come out of this even more skilled and positioned.
10. What advice would you give for someone entering business journalism today?
Don’t expect to be trained, or brought along. There are very few spots to walk into in print newsrooms, and online and broadcast journalism are becoming more sophisticated in both content and preservation. That being said, you can jump-start your career by years and put yourself on the top of the heap for the jobs that do exist by showing the ability from day one to explain complex business developments in clear terms for the everyday reader.
I assume that any young person today is going to learn multimedia skills. Those are on the way to being commodities. HTML skills don’t impress me anymore. The knowledge that gives you the power to convey information better than everyone else — THERE’s the advantage.
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