Over the past several years, Kent Hoover interviewed me on several small business issues.  I recently had the chance to reverse roles and interview Kent.

Kent Hoover is the Washington Bureau Chief for American City Business Journals, a chain of 41 local business newspapers around the country.  Kent has covered business news for 23 years.

Tom:    When policy officials want you to cover their own initiatives, what convinces you to write the story?

Kent:   If it’s going to have a significant impact on businesses, particularly small businesses. Plus, there needs to be some meat on the bones — vague promises or general statements of principles don’t mean much. I’ll write a story if they can tell me exactly what they’re doing and convince me that businesses should care about it. It also needs to be timely.

Tom:   There are so many debates going on in Washington.  How do you prioritize when covering the White House, agencies, congress, and other parts of the policy infrastructure?

Kent:  I look first for issues/initiatives that affect small businesses. Many of our readers are small business owners, and it’s an undercovered beat in Washington. But, as you know, small businesses are key to the health of our economy. I tend to pay more attention to Congress and agencies such as the SBA, Commerce, Labor and EPA than to the White House. Too many White House events are simply photo-ops, plus the two times I’ve been to presidential press conferences, I didn’t get to ask a question. The White House also is good about emailing me every word the president says, so I don’t miss anything.
    Congressional hearings are good sources of information about issues, if staff has done its work and invited a good cross-section of witnesses. Business groups generally do a good job of getting real-life business folks to testify about how an issue/policy affects them, which makes for a better story than just quoting policy wonks.
    As for prioritizing issues, right now it’s health care, health care, health care. I don’t try to keep up with the daily posturing, but I’ve been covering health care reform based on how it would affect small businesses, e.g. whether specific proposals would make health insurance more or less affordable, the impact of an employer mandate, and who would be hit by higher taxes to pay for the program.

Tom:   Newspapers and other print media outlets have been hit hard in this recession.  How has the economic downturn impacted your work?

Kent:   I’m more conscious than ever of bringing value to my readers, and by extension, my employer. I’m a one-man Washington bureau, so I’ve got to hustle.

Tom:    The credibility of government officials and others who you interview is important for the credibility of your reporting.  Have you ever been lied to in conjunction with writing a story?  How do you check your sources and the facts?

Kent:   I can’t recall an instance where a government official has actually lied to me — misrepresented or skewed the facts, yeah, politicians do that all the time. I try to do evidence-based reporting — get the actual data, regulation or legislation that’s being talked about and see what it actually says or does. I’ll report that, and then get various perspectives on what it means or could mean, and whether that’s good or bad.
 
Tom:    You recently branched out to author a blog at Portfolio.com.  How is writing a blog different than your Bureau Chief responsibilities?

Kent:   With the blog, I get to have more of a point of view than in the straight news stories I do for the business journals. Plus, the blog isn’t as centered on small businesses as my business journal stories are. One day I’ll do an item on politics, the next day on the economy, the next day on financial regulation. The blog is a lot of fun, but it’s hard to be pithy and profound every day.

Tom:    Many blog postings attract amazing numbers of readers who comment on the articles.  How does Portfolio.com get readers to comment on your postings?  Do you read the comments that are posted in response to your blog articles?

Kent:   So far we’re not getting a lot of comments — most business owners and executives are too busy to pontificate. I do read the comments, and I really like it when readers of my business journal stories email their reactions to me. The more I hear from real-life business owners, the better job I’ll do covering business.

Tom:   What advice do you have for anyone who wants to start contributing to a blog or starting a blog on their own?
Kent:   Don’t quite your day job! Plus, don’t do it unless you have something unique to contribute. Portfolio also has bloggers covering health care, media and technology, so I tend not to write about those areas. Instead, I’m their man in Washington, providing the insights I’ve gained from a decade of covering Congress and the federal government to the burning business issues of the day.

Tom Sullivan is part of a growing government affairs practice at Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough. Tom is a Senior Fellow in Regulatory Studies at the Institute for Liberty, serves on the Advisory Board of the NFIB Small Business Legal Center, and is an advisor for the Center for Small Business and the Environment.