15 Smart Questions to Ask Small Businesses: Chris Roush, award-winning professor and founding director of the Carolina Business News Initiative at the University of North Carolina, presents 15 questions to ask small businesses throughout your business coverage during the free, full-day workshop, "Finding Your Best Investigative Business Story." This training event was hosted by the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism and the the SPJ Madison Pro Chapter at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Sept. 28, 2013. For more information about free training for business journalists, please visit http://businessjournalism.org. For more tips on how to develop investigative business journalism stories, please visit http://bit.ly/investigativebiz2013.

1. Title Slide15 smart questions to ask small businesses
Chris Roush | croush@email.unc.edu
University of Wisconsin - Madison
Sept. 28, 2013

2. Private companies
n Writing about small and private businesses
can be fascinating because it forces the
reporter to dig deeper into analyzing a
company’s situation.
n You can’t rely on Securities and Exchange
Commission filings to provide the facts.
n You have to interview competitors, interview
customers and clients, assess the market
and look for clues as to why a small business
is successful – or struggling to make ends
meet.

3. Private companies
n Writing about private companies is a lot
like writing about publics.
n However, the information may be harder
to find.
n But small and private companies will
open up and talk if they are approached
in the right way.

4. The issues

5. Private companies
n Find ways to include private
companies in broader
stories.
n Private business owners and
executives can be willing to
talk about the local and
regional economy.
n They also might talk for
stories assessing issues
such as a shortage of
experienced workers or how
they’ll be affected by new
laws.
Photo by flickr user ShortcutsUSA

6. Private companies
n Many small-business reporters focus on
issues and trends instead of profiling
companies.
n They’re looking at how these small
companies are struggling to make it in the
business world.
n They’re writing about the decision to provide
health insurance and other benefits to
workers, and how the cost of doing so can
cripple a small operation.

7. Private companies
n They’re writing about the struggle of a
small-business owner to hand his
operation over to the next generation
after 40 years of running the
company.
n They’re assessing the impact of the
new Home Depot in town on the local
hardware stores that have been part
of the community for a half-century.

8. Private companies
n With each story, the
reporter isn’t writing
about the business, but
is gaining the trust of
the small and private
business owner or
executive.
n Then, when news
specifically about the
company merits
coverage, they’ll be
more likely to open up.
Photo by flickr user StripeyAnne

9. Private companies
n Like most businesses, the small and private
companies need to understand the role of
the media.
n Many of them will expect to receive glowing
or positive coverage, and when they don’t
get it, they’ll be mad.
n Some of them may even believe that
positive coverage is a quid pro quo in
exchange for their advertising.

10. Private companies
n Some stories are written about small and
private businesses if they’re unique to the
market.
n The Door County Advocate in Sturgeon Bay,
Wis., covered the opening of the first car
wash in the county north of Sturgeon Bay.
n But that’s because of its uniqueness – it’s the
only car wash for miles. Make it clear that the
media outlet decides what’s news.

11. Private companies
n Writing about small and private businesses
can be done to show how they’re changing
and evolving with the community.
n The Southeast Missourian in Cape Girardeau,
Mo., wrote about the influx of immigrant
small-business owners and international
workers in its area in a front-page story.
n The story helped explain go its readers why
these businesses are opening around town.

12. Profiling the private company

13. Profiling the private company
n Private company stories are sometimes too
positive because they don’t include numbers.
n These stories may seen innocuous, and
they’re often written as flattering, positive
stories that tell the story of how a business is
thriving or succeeding because of its products
or its services.
n Many times, these stories can read like
advertorials, copy that the business should
have probably paid the newspaper to run.

14. Profiling the private company
n Profiles of small and private businesses,
however, don’t always have to be this way.
n Business reporters fell all over themselves in
the 1990s writing about the latest Internet
company to go public and make millionaires
of its workers.
n Many reporters who write stories about small
and private businesses aren’t being as critical
as they can be – and should be.

15. Profiling the private company
n If things aren’t going well, don’t sugarcoat it.
n If a particular industry is suffering, don’t buy
the story that one small business in that
industry is telling you when he remarks,
“We’ve never had a better season.”
n He’s probably lying.
Photobyflickruserviczak11

16. Profiling the private company
n The Petersburg Pilot in Alaska focused on the
struggles of local salmon fisheries in its paper.
n The story did not mince words. It began:
n Wave after wave of bad forecasts are rocking
Alaskan’s salmon fishery as fisherman and
processors scramble for that miracle seasick-curing
patch. The amount of fish not returning is not enough
to cause this nausea; the price heaved at the
independent fisherman, however, leaves them weak-
kneed with sea legs.

17. Profiling the private company
n Think of reporting about
small and private
businesses the same way as
stories about larger
businesses.
n They’re just as important to
the reader and viewer.
n Because it’s being written
about a business that
probably hasn’t had much
exposure, the piece will
probably have more readers
wanting to learn about a
company they haven’t
heard about before.
Photo by flickr user John Steven F.

18. Profiling the private company
n Think of writing profiles of small and private
businesses as potentially being companies
that might be sold, might go out of business,
or go public in the future, putting them in the
public’s eye.
n With stories already written about the
company, your media outlet will have the
background to cover future stories more
thoroughly about the company.

19. Profiling the private company
n Small and private businesses like for the media to
write stories about them when they’re new and trying
to attract customers.
n But rarely do they want the attention when they’re
going out of business.
n Still, these stories can also be important because
they might reflect on the broader town or county
economy.
n If a store couldn’t make it in the town, what does that
say about the future of similar stores in the area?

20. Profiling the private company
n Reporting about small and private
businesses often requires the journalist
to focus on the founder of the business
or the owner.
n They’re often the ones that control the
company.
n Without that interview, though, where do
you turn?

21. Profiling the private company
n If possible, find out where the founder
used to work.
n Maybe someone there can tell you
about his work habits or his business
ideas.
n Maybe he was fired or dismissed from
his previous job, or left his previous
employer to start a competing business.

22. Profiling the private company
n Many of them are protective of their
business, and want a reporter to
recognize the long hours and the tough
times that were put in to make the
business successful, or at least survive.
n If a business owner is reluctant to give
you an interview, understand that
they’re leery.

23. Profiling the private company
n One way to get past the
hesitation is to let the
business owner see that
you recognize the pain
that went into building the
operation.
n That doesn’t mean your
story has to be positive.
n But a good point to make
in most profiles of small
and private businesses is
how they were started and
that they have lasted as
long as they have.
Photo by flickr user Travlr

24. Questions to ask yourself
n Whom else should you talk to besides the
business owner to keep it from being a one-
source story?
n How can you add quick context about the
industry to a story on a small business? For
example, new coffee shop opens in town –
what are the overarching issues, concerns in
that retail sector that you should ask the
business owner about?

25. The 15 Questions
n 15 questions for the small or private business
owner.
n Many small business owners are wary of questions
from reporters, particularly when they’ve never been
interviewed before. These questions will show the
owner that you’re genuinely interested in telling
readers about his company.
1. Where did you get the idea to start your
business? How does your background fit into the
company idea?

26. The 15 Questions
2. How did you fund the business? Did the money
come from savings or relatives?
3. How soon after you first opened your doors did
your business first make a profit? How did you
celebrate?
4. What was the hardest obstacle to overcome in
getting the business off the ground?
5. Who do you consider to be your biggest
competitor and why?

27. The 15 Questions
6. How have you grown
the business? Has it been
through advertising or
customer recommendations?
7. Who is your biggest
customer? What would you
do if you lost that customer?
8. What is your best-
selling item?
Photo by flickr user John Prolly

28. The 15 Questions
9. How would you react if a similar business
opened nearby? How could you handle the increased
competition?
10. How big do you foresee your company
becoming in the next five years? In the next 10
years?
11. What would make you sell your business to
another company?

29. The 15 Questions
12. How are your employees involved in the day-to-
day decision-making for the business?
13. What is your end game? Do you plan to sell the
business, or hand it down to a new generation?
14. Has your financial performance improved or
worsened in the past year? Can you give details.
15. What is the one thing that you want people to
know about your business?