Storytelling Has a Place on the Business Page

By Vandana Sinha
May 27, 2005 11:21 AM

The Toledo Blade reporter walked into the La-Z-Boy shareholder meeting and couldn't help but be surprised by the sight.

In the center of the room, shareholders discussed numbers while lounging in the comfortably padded chairs that made the company famous. And when he strolled outside, he saw another group of investors huddled on picnic benches, murmuring about when lunch would be served.

At the end of the day, well after he filed his story on the meeting, those were the images that stuck in his mind. Those were the images he laughed about that night with his wife, Laurie Hertzel, now a writing coach at the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

Yet when she picked up the Ohio newspaper that next morning, those were the images missing from the story.

That was nearly 20 years ago. At the time, she says, the Blade's business stories just weren't written that way. But they'd probably hook more readers if they were.

When you think "business desk," you rarely think "narrative style." But why not? News and narratives need not always be mutually exclusive. Peek behind the facts and figures, and you find business stories swept up in money, greed, ambition and ego. There are power struggles and personality clashes. That stuff would fill a three-hour movie with explosive drama, why not a 15-inch story in the business section?

Narrative writing takes an open mind and a sharp eye for characters, color and dialogue. And you don't have to work in the features department to have -- and use -- those skills.

"Business has always been a breed apart. It's kind of mysterious. It covers stuff we don't understand. But it doesn't have to be," says Hertzel, also the newspaper's interim assistant managing editor for projects. "If it's interesting, if it's more human, if it's funny, if it's surprising, it makes people want to read it. It makes people want to come back."

Narrative style is difficult to define, but like all great writing, you know it when you read it. It's truthful storytelling. It's the reporter acting as narrator, setting painstakingly detailed scenes that readers can picture in their minds. It's not only saying a board member voted, it's adding that he took a deep breath and looked skyward before whispering yea or nay. It's not only saying a rookie entrepreneur struggled to start her firm, it's adding that she drove a rusted, gray 1989 Chevy Cavalier to a rented office the size of a walk-in closet, where five of seven days a week, she'd end up microwaving Ramen noodles in water for a midnight meal.

It's the stuff that makes your stories more human. And it belongs on the business page.

Though, learn when to use narrative style. Quarterly earnings: probably not the best candidate. However, it also need not be a 96-inch, front-page life story of a CEO.

Sometimes, a single line or phrase will do: "Leaning back and kicking his feet up on his brown leather recliner, the La-Z-Boy chief financial officer described the latest shareholder proposal."

Think about where people intersect with your business and what actions push forward business decisions -- basically, the stories behind the stories. Hertzel goes even further and lists the requirements for strong narratives: characters, conflict, scenes, action, dialogue, tension, resolution.

Start, oddly enough, with a question. One that drives the story and has something powerful at stake, like livelihood, salary, survival, the American dream. Sound melodramatic? It's not. That's what you get with stories about mergers, layoffs, strikes. Will this company survive? Will workers land on their feet? Will this CEO make the right decisions? Readers should want to finish the tale to find the answer.

Then find the right characters. The stock market shouldn't be the main character of every story. No matter how you write it, no one will ever get that attached to the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Your readers are your main characters -- from regular people who clock in each morning and need health benefits to the executives who sweat through initial public offerings and decide those health benefits.

"People run businesses. People work for businesses. People invest their lifetimes in a business," Hertzel says. "Business is about people, and sometimes that gets lost."

But don't settle for anybody. Your main characters must be interesting to you, she says, and key players in the scenario, people who move the action forward. Plus, they can't be standoffish. They need to know you, as reporters, will essentially stalk them with a notebook and pen, and be okay with that. Hertzel says to look for introspective people, those who can understand and, more importantly, articulate their own motivations.

Then set the scene. Go there to get the details, the trinkets on the desk, the texture of the furniture, the background noise. Make readers see what you're seeing, smell what you're smelling, feel what you're feeling, hear what you're hearing.

And that includes dialogue, which Hertzel calls "a powerful tool." Reporters seem trained to pick up the pithy quote. Listen instead for what those statements say about the person -- is he or she long-winded or short-tempered? Self-absorbed or self-conscious? That comes, not from interviews with you, but from conversations with others that never involve you. Whether it's a casual exchange between executive and employee or bickering between board members, write it down. Three-minute dialogue can speak volumes in a story.

None of this is easy -- it involves a change in mindset, a departure from our natural instincts as business reporters to give just the facts, ma'am. "You go into any assignment with a reporter's eye," Hertzel says. "Think about how you've written the story straight. Then how you go home and tell your friends at the end of the day about the quirks. Those can sometimes be the germ for telling the story in a different way."

Yes, sometimes it's just about the quirks, like La-Z-Boy chairs and a longing for munchies in the middle of an annual shareholder meeting.

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