Marianne English is a freelance health and science writer whose articles for Discovery News often focus on academic research. While pursuing a master’s degree in journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she continues to publish pieces on a wide variety of subjects — everything from baseball and education to sharks and HIV.
From Wild West sheriffs trading drinks for votes to PACs pouring on the soft money, cash has long been central to politics. This relationship only deepened in January 2011 with the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which enabled corporations to spend unlimited amounts in support of candidates — and anonymously, should they choose to do so.
Reporting intelligently about the financial markets has become increasingly important as more people have added stocks to their financial portfolios. Just 40 years ago less than 20% of U.S. households had some sort of stock ownership; now more than half do. While stocks are the most widely known financial product traded in the markets, others include bonds (debt, essentially), commodities and futures contracts, and currency.
The following is reprinted courtesy of Jeffrey Seglin, lecturer in public policy and director of the Harvard Kennedy School Communications Program:
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Journalists are often thought of as being “word people,” and however true that may or may not be, even the most diligent reporter can blanche when faced with a thicket of figures. But sidestepping or downplaying numbers can be perilous.
Appropriately and accurately used, they can be the very foundation of a story — a project is over or under budget; students’ graduation rates are above or below average; prices are collapsing or spiking. It can even tell you when something is fact or folly.
Tell a journalist that understanding how to read a financial statement could lead to some story ideas, and they’ll likely run as far away as possible. He or she got into writing for a living to avoid numbers.
Renée Loth, a columnist for the Boston Globe, is the newspaper’s former editorial page editor. In that capacity, Loth was the highest-ranking woman at the Globe for nine years. Having covered presidential campaigns and served in various oversight capacities as editor, she’s spent a career both sorting through spin and practicing the art of informed opinion.
The job of a breaking-news lead is to accurately relate the essence and urgency of a story in the most efficient way possible. The art of a breaking-news lead is to do so in a way that’s not just readable, but also natural and memorable.
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