"Nightly Business Report" anchor on what makes a good biz journalist

TALKING BIZ NEWS EXCLUSIVE

Business journalists need to be able to find stories from numbers, but also should be able to tell those stories in a way that’s compelling to the average person, according to the co-anchor of “Nightly Business Report.”

“To understand the role of money and its terms is key to furthering your career,” said Tom Hudson, who spoke to journalism students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “Learn how to look at these sets of data and ask yourself, ‘What’s the story?'”

Business reporters should also be able to look at numbers and see what’s missing from a story, and shouldn’t complain that the numbers are too complex to understand. “To understand the role of money and its terminology is key to furthering your career,” he said.

Hudson became the new co-anchor, along with Susie Gharib, of the nightly business and financial news show on PBS, at the end of 2009. The show, which airs on more than 200 stations across the country, has undergone an overhaul in the past year in a bid to attract new viewers.

Finding people and examples to help tell business and financial-related stories helps explain the significance of the topics to readers who may not otherwise understand, added Hudson. He noted that every question should focus on money.

“People are much more open to tell you about some tryst, one way or another, than they are to tell you about how much money they have in their checking account,” said Hudson. “We need writers to provide context, to provide the human flair.”

Hudson pointed to a story from “Nightly Business Report” last month that took Target Corp.’s $1 billion worth of renovations to more than 300 of its stores and explained to the readers how much more they were likely to spend on a trip to the retailer after one of the stores had been overhauled.

“It gets down to understanding the broad forces in the economy…and to tell stories that are relatable and accessible,” he said. “We need to be approachable, accessible and interesting.”

Hudson added that the stories on “Nightly Business Report” include more visuals than business news stories on CNBC or Bloomberg Television, which he cited as its main competitors.

“Our mission is to empower people to make better financial decisions,” said Hudson. “Nightly Business Report”‘s viewers “come to the program with higher expectations.”

Hudson also said that he’d like to see the show cover more international business stories. “Some of it is just having the time and resources,” he said.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.

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Jessica Goldberg says:
September 23, 2010 at 9:51 am
I absolutely agree that the numbers are a huge part to business stories. Tracking and following the money is a lot what business reporting is about. Instead of complaining that it is too hard to understand, the best way to understand the numbers, especially if you are new, is to ask a variety of experts and to research anything that confuses you or strikes you as odd. Never take just one opinion though. The more experience a reporter gets with dealing with business stories the more familiar they will become.
Business reporters must be able to communicate with two very different groups of people. They must be able to effective understand the lingo and communicate with the elite business professionals. At the same time they must be able to convert all of that knowledge into what their viewers will understand.
I could not agree more with Hudson when he says that business stories must be “relatable and accessible” because if they are not, you will not have an audience.