Potential Business Stories Run Rampant on Energy Beat

If there was one topic that boasts the combination of being both incomprehensibly obscure and painfully relevant to everyday readers, it would be crude oil.

It involves reporting on complicated markets, mind-twisting science and international economic nuances. And yet, the average person ultimately feels the pinch of those things at the pump every day. Just last week, gas prices became the culprit for record low consumer confidence and record high credit card delinquencies.

With everything from taxi drivers to airline companies raising their rates with the oil prices nowadays, no energy reporter's basket of potential stories could be at risk of running on empty.

Still, skim many of the business headlines, especially in pre-hurricane era, and most of what you'll find reads something like this: "Crude oil topped $60 a barrel" or "Crude oil rose slightly before settling to $58 a barrel."

The beat offers so much more color and consequence than what those headlines suggest. Rather than letting their stories merely seesaw with the price shifts, energy reporters should sniff out fresh angles and, in the end, both step back to get the global picture and focus in to get the consumer viewpoint.

They are getting many more chances to do that after the war in Iraq and back-to-back Gulf Coast hurricanes threw crude oil prices to the wind. When the gas bill borders on $4 a gallon, that dramatically changes the way we cover the industry and its costs to consumers in particular, and society at large. And it revamps the geeky oil story into the desirable debutante of front pages nationwide.

"It's not just for The Houston Chronicle or oil trade publications to care about," says David Ivanovich, business reporter in the Washington bureau of the Chronicle. "I think we're in the throes of a real energy crunch right now. And it's going to be an issue at the top of the national agenda and top of people's minds every time they pass a gas pump."

Trouble is, not all factors of the oil beat are on the tops of reporters' minds. So Ivanovich offers a bit of a checklist to help unearth the beat's various incarnations.

For one, it's a global beat. Oil is hardly a domestic business, it never was and surely never will be. Hence, our supply problem. So keeping in mind international news and events gives your oil stories context.

"You have to pay attention in world markets and political structure," Ivanovich says. "It's not just about gas prices in cities here. It's about oil overseas. It's about a strike in Venezuela. It's about production in Saudi Arabia. It's about the legal structure in Russia."

In fact, tomorrow, it may very well be the spiraling demand in China. With more and more drivers in Beijing draining an already sapped supply of oil, Americans may see more hikes in their corner gas station prices.

It's a political beat. Especially now, as politicians have made high gas prices a pet predicament. The oil companies employ lobbyists who appeal to Congress members who have to answer to constituents who are your readers. That chain of sources clinks through Capitol Hill, and energy reporters should pay plenty of attention to each link.

The key, however, is to question the rhetoric and listen for the real concerns. And know which link in that political chain can really address the latter.

For example, Ivanovich says, take the federal hue and cry over price-gouging. In its indignance, the Department of Energy produced a Web site where regular drivers can report suspected overpricing by gas stations around the country. Federal officials also opened up a hotline that relayed calls to no lesser heavyweights than the Federal Trade Commission and Justice Department. It wasn't until Ivanovich started asking more questions that he found out the federal government has no law banning price gouging and no jurisdiction over punishing it.

"If you keep asking questions, you figure out who's talking furiously and who's blowing steam," he says. "Are they really addressing the issue or are they simply doing something to make people feel good?"

It's a science and environmental beat. Part of this hearkens back to those bad old days of organic chemistry. Ask experts, analysts, researchers and OPEC watchers to explain concepts of crude oil to you as if you were still a ninth-grade student sitting in class. Otherwise, your readers aren't likely to understand them either.

Think of non-gas implications -- the results on the sport utility vehicle market, for instance. Car makers like Toyota and Ford are releasing new hybrid SUVs (an oxymoron, once upon a time), but will there be a market for these once-trendy vehicles on steroids?

One thing the crude oil beat is not: a black-and-white beat. Ivanovich says we can often liken oil companies to those evil tobacco conglomerates. And environmentalists end up sprouting wings and a halo by the end of our stories. Many times, he says, those descriptions don't fit the bill -- especially when you aim lower than the CEO and talk to mid-level managers at the oil companies.

"They're not always wearing the black hat," he says. That image may be "largely the industry's fault. But that's not doing a reporter's job. You need to figure out what the story is about."

Now the story is starting to be about natural gas prices. How much are readers willing to pay to keep warm during the winter? That's as painfully relevant as a business beat can get.

Copyright © 2008 Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism