Categories: OLD Media Moves

The Bill Shakespeare method of reading business news

Jerry Bowyer writes on the TCS Daily web site about reading business news in the same way one should read plays by William Shakespeare.

Bowyer wrote, “Next time you read a newspaper, I want you to try the Much Ado about Nothing Analytical Tool. In the left column you put sentences with stats based on an actual count of something real – jobs, dollars, interest rates, prices. Quotes, if they are substantial, go in the left column too. Actual events like hurricanes, elections, wars and terrorist attacks are definitely left column material.

“Your right column is for sentences with words like ‘worries’, ‘concerns’, ‘expectations’ or ‘believes’. Unattributed quotes go on the right, as do short quotes. Opinion polls go on the right. This includes opinion polls masquerading as economic stats like consumer confidence, or business confidence. Elections and futures markets, however, go on the left. ‘Sub-prime jitters’ is a left column thing.

“Now step back and compare your two columns. The first column is a glimpse, however incomplete, of the world as it is. The second is a glimpse, no matter how distorted, of the world as people perceive it.”

Read more here.

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.