On Business Reporting

Business reports have never been easy to write; they have never been easy to read too, especially when you know little about businesses, investments, stocks and the like. You read the newspaper everyday but do you actually read the business section or skip it? Maybe you’d prefer skipping it. If not, you see numbers but do you actually understand them? Maybe not.
Business reports are really hard to understand, maybe except for the people from the business sector who could make sense of all the numbers and the words.
But besides the importance of the readers’ understanding and appreciation of business reports, there’s one more important thing that should be considered:
Are journalists willing to write business reports?
“But we need to ensure that it keeps on keeping on. We need to ensure that there's a steady flow of eager young reporters who like poring through 10-Ks. How can we do that most efficiently?” George Harmon said in his article, Grading Business Journalism.
Business reporters still do exist but are relatively small as compared to reporters in other beats. I admit even I am not planning to take business writing as my journalism elective, what more to write for the business section after I graduate.
In order to be a good business reporter, you need to understand what businessmen are talking about. You have to understand their language, just as they understand each other. How could you relay the information to the public effectively if even you, yourself, don’t know what you’re talking about? You have to understand how stocks and money work. That’s your job.
If there are no business reporters, how would we know who the countries’ wealthiest are and about the existence of the National Anti-Poverty Commission?
At first, all these may seem irrelevant to people like us, who know little about business stuff. But then we begin to wonder… How do these people earn so much while most of us earn just enough and some just barely enough? Where does our money go when we pay taxes? What happens when we buy and sell bonds? How does money circulate around us?
All of these, as we see, affect us. And I believe what affects our lives are surely important to us.