Despite a plunge in newspaper jobs of more than half since 2000, business news is a growth industry that has created new opportunities for journalists in print, digital and newsletter formats.
And for some very good reasons. Business news is not the latest journalism fad; it never goes out of style. Economic news explains our world. Business and personal finance are central to our lives. Our world is more interconnected economically than ever before, as we saw in April with the global stock gyrations following U.S. President Donald Trump's tariff announcements. In tough times — as business leaders such as BlackRock CEO Larry Fink are predicting for 2025 — economic news is more important to us than ever.
So even if you aren't applying for a job at a business news outlet, you need to improve your skill set to effectively cover economic issues. Every journalist should be able to write about business or economic topics with comfort and ease.
Here are 11 tips to help you write easy-to-understand and impactful business reports:
(1) Know your audience
Are your readers well versed on business topics in general? Do you write for a general audience? Are you looking for specialty stories for your region, or regional stories about a national (or global) topic? Your approach to today's big news story is likely to vary so you can engage your audience.
Example: If you're covering trade wars, are you writing for a national, international or local audience? Does your audience skew toward highly educated businesspeople or investors who understand the economics of tariffs and are familiar with concepts such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), the Doha Round, Section 201 and export controls? Do your readers want to know how higher tariffs will affect local consumers, small businesses or hometown jobs? Do you serve a specialty audience interested in a sector of the economy such as agriculture, an industry like soybeans, or demographic groups ranging from investors to the elderly? The major facts don't change, but your reporting angle and writing style do.
(2) Be an expert
If it’s your beat, you already are. If you’ve been assigned a story on an unfamiliar topic, do your homework. Research, research, research! Talk to experts in the field. Talk to academics, trade groups, labor leaders, public officials. Hear what "real people" really think.
You need to master the subject before you can communicate with clarity. Economic journalists must heed Albert Einstein's famous words, “If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough." If you can't explain it simply, do more research.
(3) Hone your analytical skills
To add value to your coverage, you must go far beyond the "what" of what has happened. You have to be able to explain why the story is important. Offer historical context or present your story in the broader context of the national or global situation.
Here’s a good guide to smart analytical story structure. What happened + what comes next? What happened + why it happened. What happened + how it happened. What happened + its impact.
In addition to your personal expertise, you should take advantage of specialists in the field. Bloomberg News recommends interviewing neutral experts. Industry, corporate or labor representatives can add insight to business stories from their particular perspectives. (Just avoid spin and propaganda.) Public officials, NGOs, citizen watchdog groups, academics and think tanks all can offer quotations, data and other information that reinforce your analytical framework.
(4) De-mystify business
Despite hundreds of acronyms and business terms bandied about by MBAs and investment counselors, economics is not an academic pursuit or a complicated science beyond the reach of mere mortals. It is real life. And the stories can be told using simple English.
Avoid acronyms. Define technical terms in succinct, simple-to-understand phrases. (Example: If the president invokes "Section 301 powers," explain that it is a section of a 1974 trade law that empowers the U.S. to penalize unfair trade practices of foreign countries that harm American commerce.)
Don’t make business pieces more complicated than they have to be. Just tell the story like you are describing it to a friend. Or your mother.
(5) Think of both the small picture and the big picture
When you are conceptualizing your story, ask yourself some key questions: How does today's news fit in the bigger picture of the topic? Who wins and who loses? What is the impact on your audience and on "real people"?
Here are a few ways you can zoom in and out when writing about the latest economic developments. Ask, what is the impact:
- For this industry and the entire economy
- For my city, state or province, the region and the country
- For the country and the world
- For this business and all businesses in its sector
- For this business and all businesses in my city, region or country
- For affected workers in my city and beyond
(6) Put people first
Business and economic stories are people stories, too. Don’t get lost in the numbers. Economic coverage tells the tales of people: lost jobs and new jobs, jobs moving from one place to another, devastated communities and communities celebrating economic expansion, high-paying jobs and declining standards of living, inflation eating away at living standards, small businesses squeezed by rising costs, tariffs and government regulation.
As Bill Dorman, news director of Hawai'i Public Radio, told Global Business Journalism students at Tsinghua University: “Put faces on the numbers and tell the stories behind the statistics.”
Think of the people who make the decisions. Think of the people who are affected by corporate decisions: employees, shareholders, consumers, citizens in the community. People-oriented business journalism is more compelling and easier for news consumers to digest.
(7) Rely on insightful quotations
Quotations are more important in business stories than in most news reports. Why? Readers want to know what experts think of major economic developments — particularly independent experts without a financial interest in the issue at hand. They also care about the reactions of business executives and public officials. Quotations from consumers or workers can add depth and a human touch to a story driven by economic data.
Concise and thoughtful quotations (not public relations mumbo jumbo) add authority and depth to your story. They underscore the theme of your story. They help convince the reader that you are not just offering your opinion.
(8) Consider the biases of sources
In economic reporting, many of the sources you deal with — both human and statistical — have biases. Your job is to present factual information and provide context so your audience can assess the information and reach its own conclusions.
When dealing with sources, always be aware of people's agendas, from ideology to politics to profits. Rely on consistently reliable sources. If a source has a bias that would not be obvious to an average reader, note that in the story.
Make sure to put data sets into context. If necessary, note that a data set has a questionable track record (or is considered the most authoritative). For example, the Chinese government puts out its official manufacturing index (the PMI), and the independent Caixin business news outlet produces its own manufacturing index (the CMI). Some economists and journalists have expressed skepticism over official Chinese government data. (Chinese state media calls this criticism "a fallacy" and "cognitive warfare against China.") You must reach your own conclusions. You may want to present the data side by side and let readers decide what to trust. Or point out the fact that one is government-produced and the other is not.
You often have competing data sets measuring the same, or similar, topics. Consumer confidence in the U.S. is measured monthly by the Conference Board, a nonpartisan business think tank, and by the University of Michigan. Global consumer confidence is tracked monthly by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), an international policymaking forum and data hub. The Conference Board also releases a monthly CEO confidence barometer. All of these measures are highly respected by business journalists. But you must be careful not to "mix apples and oranges." Compare the same data set over time rather than mixing your surveys.
(9) Sweat the small stuff
Legendary BusinessWeek editor-in-chief Stephen Shepard told his staff to make sure their numbers are correct because people in the business community will always notice errors — and complain.
Small mistakes harm your credibility, and your publication's. Don't confuse millions, billions and trillions. Don't mix up percentage increase and percentage points. Spell names correctly and double-check people's job titles. It's easy. There's no room for error, and no excuse for errors.
(10) Remember: You are not a cheerleader
Journalists are neutral observers and analysts. We don’t cheer for good news and write “unfortunately" about bad news. We are not rooting for the businesses we cover to do well or for the economy to boom or for unemployment to go down. We are not sad about workers who lose jobs or factories that close. We show the human side of the news through description, details and quotations, not through loaded adverbs and personal asides.
It's important to maintain independence from the players we cover. You must decide the news angle — not the people you are covering.
"We write about what’s happening, not necessarily what is announced," Colin Pope, editor of the Austin Business Journal, reminded Global Business Journalism students.
(11) Make your writing accessible
Structure your story carefully to make it easily accessible to your audience. As veteran business journalist and professor Chris Roush writes: “You can be the greatest business reporter of all time and find all kinds of amazing facts about companies or the economy. But unless you know how to put those facts together in a compelling series of words and sentences, your work will have gone to waste.”
Get to the point immediately. What's new? What's the most important information? Why is it important? It may seem counterintuitive, but try to avoid numbers in the lead of an economics story. It's better to write that "Ukraine's economy will shrink by almost half this year, according to a report released by the World Bank" than to use the specific number, 45%. Numbers, particularly large numbers, can confuse readers and obscure the impact of the news. It's better to use vivid descriptions that offer context and then circle back with specific data.
That's exactly what Bloomberg News did in this October 2024 report. "Chinese stocks listed onshore headed for their first decline in 11 days as traders grew impatient with the pace of Beijing's stimulus measures, with sentiment also hurt by weak holiday-spending data," the story by Charlotte Yang began. Only in the second paragraph did Bloomberg start unspooling numbers: "The benchmark CSI Index slid as much as 7.4%, wiping out the gain of 5.9% it made Tuesday..."
When citing economic data, it is best to put the new number first, followed by either the previous data point or the change from the previous data point. This provides instant context. Don't overwhelm your audience with numbers. As a general rule, limit yourself to two numbers in a sentence. Try to avoid numbers in back-to-back sentences.
You can find yourself drowning in numbers. You're the expert: decide what is most important and leave the rest out. You are the gate-keeper for your readers. Your judgment is important. Don’t overwhelm them with information of diminishing value.
Your information should be easily understood. Avoid most acronyms (YOY, ROI, YTD), but a few — like CEO and GDP — are widely understood and always acceptable. Avoid business jargon such as synergy, robust, core competency, low-hanging fruit or mission-critical. Your story should sound like a conversation with a knowledgeable friend, not a corporate press release or a government report.
That kind of writing will allow you to convey to your audience your analytical skill and indomitable spirit of inquiry. Those traits are essential to success in economic reporting, Mark Hamrick, senior economic analyst for Bankrate.com, told Global Business Journalism students.
“People in business journalism should have a native curiosity that never sleeps.”
This piece was produced in collaboration with the Global Business Journalism program at Tsinghua University. The program is a partnership between ICFJ, Tsinghua University and Bloomberg News.
Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko via Pexels.