The Business of Telling the Story of Business
A friend of mine once asked me: “How does it feel to leave mainstream daily news reporting and commit to the world of financial and business journalism, isn’t it awfully dry and boring?”
My answer was and remains this: In daily general reporting the focus is always on the bad news and how to present it in a splashier way than our competitors, with maybe a little more detail and information. Scoops are rare and often contain very little that is new wrapped in a lot of shiny packaging. In mainstream journalism it is also harder to escape taking sides, even the kind of stories one reports or doesn’t define a publication’s political direction.
I’m not saying the same risks do not apply in financial journalism, they do, but there is always a clearer and better defined line. In financial or business reporting, especially in a country with few sources of reliable hard data and information for businesses, the sky for the financial journalist is literary the limit. The same rigor and perfectionism applied in drafting a business plan or legal contract is applied to a financial reporter’s research and data gathering, thereby delivering a better more tightly put together product to readers that actually adds value.
I find small to medium size businesses and the people who have the vision and courage to set up their own and stake their claim to a great idea, fascinating, they have lessons in life to teach us all.
As for business, it is the most common activity that we all take part in on a daily basis, whenever we buy and sell or engage the services of a service provider, or make an investment decision; we all do business even if it’s only on a small individual scale. We do it with family and strangers, criminals do it and law abiding citizens too, people at war have been known to exchange goods with one another, even die hard communist Cuba started doing it, allowing its citizens to open small shops on their front porches! In fact the last people to do business I bet were probably that lost tribe in the South American rain forest in the 1950s that made it a point not to interact with other living human beings unless they were at the end of a spear, but even they must have exchanged goods within their own collective.
In short, I feel confident when I say that there are always more people doing business in this world at any one time than having sex! And that’s saying something. I would also wager that most disillusioned young men and women think of opening their own business at one stage in their life, they may not call it a business, they may call it a pub or a bike shop, but whatever the activity, it’s still a business.
When I finished school I knew one thing for certain: I would never go into business like my father and spend my weekends pouring over ledgers and getting ulcers whenever suppliers fail to deliver or customers’ payments are late. But now, at 40, I am beginning to understand the passion my father had for his small business and although I never asked him while he lived, I am sure to him all the long nights were worth it. There in only one other thing that we love as human beings more than our business, our first born. Now that is food for thought.
My answer was and remains this: In daily general reporting the focus is always on the bad news and how to present it in a splashier way than our competitors, with maybe a little more detail and information. Scoops are rare and often contain very little that is new wrapped in a lot of shiny packaging. In mainstream journalism it is also harder to escape taking sides, even the kind of stories one reports or doesn’t define a publication’s political direction.
I’m not saying the same risks do not apply in financial journalism, they do, but there is always a clearer and better defined line. In financial or business reporting, especially in a country with few sources of reliable hard data and information for businesses, the sky for the financial journalist is literary the limit. The same rigor and perfectionism applied in drafting a business plan or legal contract is applied to a financial reporter’s research and data gathering, thereby delivering a better more tightly put together product to readers that actually adds value.
I find small to medium size businesses and the people who have the vision and courage to set up their own and stake their claim to a great idea, fascinating, they have lessons in life to teach us all.
As for business, it is the most common activity that we all take part in on a daily basis, whenever we buy and sell or engage the services of a service provider, or make an investment decision; we all do business even if it’s only on a small individual scale. We do it with family and strangers, criminals do it and law abiding citizens too, people at war have been known to exchange goods with one another, even die hard communist Cuba started doing it, allowing its citizens to open small shops on their front porches! In fact the last people to do business I bet were probably that lost tribe in the South American rain forest in the 1950s that made it a point not to interact with other living human beings unless they were at the end of a spear, but even they must have exchanged goods within their own collective.
In short, I feel confident when I say that there are always more people doing business in this world at any one time than having sex! And that’s saying something. I would also wager that most disillusioned young men and women think of opening their own business at one stage in their life, they may not call it a business, they may call it a pub or a bike shop, but whatever the activity, it’s still a business.
When I finished school I knew one thing for certain: I would never go into business like my father and spend my weekends pouring over ledgers and getting ulcers whenever suppliers fail to deliver or customers’ payments are late. But now, at 40, I am beginning to understand the passion my father had for his small business and although I never asked him while he lived, I am sure to him all the long nights were worth it. There in only one other thing that we love as human beings more than our business, our first born. Now that is food for thought.
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