How a biz journalist wrote a book with a short leave

TALKING BIZ NEWS EXCLUSIVE

For Loren Steffy, the business columnist for the Houston Chronicle, the past six months has been a whirlwind.

Steffy has written a book, published earlier this month by McGraw-Hill, called “Drowning in Oil: BP and the Reckless Pursuit of Profit.” The reporting began shortly after the Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill in April, giving him about six months from the beginning of the project until its end.

The book project originated from reporting that Steffy had done before the explosion, but most of the work was done during a one-month leave he took from the paper.

Steffy previously was the Dallas bureau chief for Bloomberg News for 12 years. Before that, he was a business reporter for the Dallas Times Herald and the Dallas Business Journal.

Steffy talked with Talking Biz News via e-mail Tuesday about his work on the book. What follows is an edited transcript.

How did you get the idea for this book?

I had actually thought of doing a book on BP after the ouster of John Browne as CEO in 2007. But despite BP’s huge presence in America, it was still seen as a British company, and Browne was largely unknown here. The Gulf spill, which I was covering for the Chronicle anyway, shifted the focus dramatically. So the book became a natural extension of the writing I was already doing for the paper.

How much work did you do on the book before taking your leave?

I already had a number of interviews with Tony Hayward and other BP execs, regulators, etc., in my notebook, which gave me a leg up on the project. I was able to squeeze in some interviews before I took my leave, and building on my earlier book I idea, I did about 20 percent of the writing before my leave started.

How did you negotiate the leave?

It’s never easy when there’s a big story that’s ongoing to ask your boss for time off to do a book. The Chronicle editors recognized the opportunity, but my columns were a key part of our coverage, so we worked out a flexible agreement. I took a month’s leave, but with the understanding that we might have to shifting the timing around depending on news events. The key was flexibility and understanding on both sides, and I think everyone’s happy with the results.

What was your work schedule like during the time away from the paper?

My wife was still working and my kids were getting up for school, so it was easy to sort of follow the existing household schedule. I pretty much kept the same hours that I did at the paper, and tried to treat it like a day at the office, just with a shorter commute. Of course, in my early Bloomberg years I worked from home, so I’m pretty used to that. The big difference was weekends. I worked shorter hours, but I still stuck to a pretty consistent schedule. Given the Cowboys’ collapse, I wasn’t distracted by the urge to watch football. During the final edits, I spend two full weekends doing nothing but going over page proofs. My kids are teenagers, so it’s a little easier to juggle the home life issues, but when there was a break, we tried to squeeze in some family activities like a camping trip or something.

How hard was it to go from writing a column to writing something longer and more fact based?

Given the time constraints of the project, I really didn’t have much time to think about it. I just sort of jumped in. I was really worried about not getting all the key interviews I needed, and once I got those, I was worried about other holes that would emerge as I started writing. So, really, the change of format wasn’t a big issue, it was managing the project on what was a pretty short deadline. Fortunately, I’d spent a few years doing magazine pieces before I came to the Chronicle, so I was somewhat familar with longer-form nonfiction. I also hired a couple of researchers which helped a lot.

How cooperative was the company in your work?

I can’t say enough good things about the support I got from the Chronicle. There was simply no way to do this without the paper’s help and backing. Much of the early reporting and research was drawn from either my earlier columns or the hard work of my colleagues. And it’s a two-way street. I tried to make sure that my editors never felt as if I was holding back stuff for the paper to benefit the book.

How do you think writing this book has helped you as a journalist?

It really reinvigorated me. We all need a change of pace once and a while, it was nice to be able to focus on one story for so long, but it was also exhausting. Now, I’ve jumped back into my column with a new enthusiasm because it is a change of pace. The book also helped from a writing standpoint. You really want to push yourself, not to overwrite, but to write the best you can. In my case, I’ve always had to tell myself to slow down for descriptions and analogies, things that help the reader understand the setting. You don’t always have do to that in a column, but in a book you do, so it forced me to use some techniques that hopefully I can incorporate into my columns going forward.

As your first book, how hard was this project?

Technically, it wasn’t my first book. I had actually completed the manuscript for a book on my father, “The Man Who Thought Like a Ship,” about a week before the Deepwater Horizon exploded. That will be published by the Texas A&M University Press, probably in early 2012. So Drowning in Oil sort of leap-frogged that project because of the newsworthy nature of the story. In many ways, it was less intimidating than writing about my dad’s work, which was highly specialized and I was terrified that I would fail to explain it accurately. BP was a company I covered, the narrative was familiar, and the business writing is what I do for a living, so it was a little more straight forward. Having already done one manuscript, I already had a system for organizing research, footnoting and all those sorts of things.

What was the most difficult part of the project?

The deadline. It really was a sprint, given the number of other books in the works. As I said, I had a bit of a leg up, but it was still a huge effort to get it done on time. The other challenge was we knew I’d have to finish it before all the investigations were complete. The presidential spill commission, for example, released its findings after the book had gone to the printer. And we’re still waiting for the tests on the blowout preventer. But by focusing on the accident in the context of BP’s history, it made it possible to have an ending that examined the implications for the company, even before the final accidents reports are done.

From the time of the explosion to the book being published was just more than six months. Do you wish you had more time?

Sure, but who doesn’t? As journalists, our lives are defined by our deadlines.