South Africa training of biz journalists

I’ve just wrapped up a two-day workshop on business journalism for 14 reporters and students from around South Africa. The seminar was sponsored by the South African National Editors’ Forum.

The first day focused on reporting skills, while the second day dealt with writing about business. One of the more-interesting discussions was the one on Thursday about reading financial statements, particularly income statements and balance sheets.

One of the journalists came up to me at the end of everything today and told me that the light bulb went off in terms of financial statements for her because I’d asked everyone in the class not to look at the statements as numbers — which can be intimidating to writers — but to look at them as telling the journalist a story. She said that subtle difference has made it easier for her to understand what the numbers mean.

One of the most interesting discussions I’ve had with business journalists in South Africa during the past two weeks is about the reaction that a company gives them after writing a critical, but fair, article. (In fact, the people at the U.S. embassy have the impression that business in South Africa is pretty much given a free ride by the press.)

The fear from the journalists is that the companies won’t talk to them if they write something critical, and they ask me how to handle such a situation. My response, time and time again, has been, “So, what’s the problem with them not talking to you?”

Elaborating on that point, I’ve explained that the companies need the journalists more than the journalists need the companies. The journalists can still write stories without the companies, but the companies can’t get attention in the media for their news without the journalists. Eventually, the companies will come back. Meanwhile, the journalists will be able to write stories about the companies using other sources, and that might, just might, mean they find stories that don’t include the company spin.

The group today told me, uniformly, that they would never show a story to a company before publication, a disclosure I was happy to hear given that other journalists in South Africa had told me earlier during my trip that they would. In addition, the SANEF group said the limit on accepting gifts from sources is roughly the equivalent of $25, about what it is in most newsrooms in the States.