Writing biz news books a special art

TALKING BIZ NEWS EXCLUSIVE

The task of writing a book about a business news event by a journalist takes an ability to collect and gather facts that are often useless in daily business journalism, said three book authors Sunday.

“You learn things that I don’t think I can sell to Larry [Ingrassia, New York Times business editor] as a daily story,” said Diana Henriques, a New York Times business reporter currently working on a book about Bernie Madoff. “I’m learning things about personality conflicts, stages of chronology that were poorly understand in the beginning.”

The discussion about business news book writing occurred at the annual Society of Business Editors and Writers conference, being held in Denver.

Dave Kansas, a former editor of the Money & Investing section of The Wall Street Journal and the author of the recent “The Wall Street Journal Guide to the End of Wall Street as We Know It,” said that daily business journalism and book business journalism accomplish different things for readers.

“The coverage in the heat of the battle is where daily newspaper as the best,” said Kansas, whereas book writing is “more in the chronicling the lead-up period. What really struck me was how the failure of Long Term Capital in 1998 was such a microcosm of what would happen in 2007 and 2008. But it was so quickly tossed aside.”

William Cohan, author of a recent book about the Bear Steans downfall, noted that books about business news events help put them in perspective.

“I’m barely a reporter at all,” said Cohan. “I don’t work on a daily paper, and I don’t cover a beat.”

Henriques and Cohan both noted that they have felt no pressure from editors to recreate scenes of conversations in their books, as some business news book have done.