I started my career as a reporter for a real-time financial news service, covering Latin American markets and economies. I churned out daily stories about how the markets performed that day, interviewed finance ministers and dove into wonky subjects like current account deficits and credit derivatives.
It was a fantastic job, but I realized after a few years that I missed talking to “real” people. I spent hours on the phone interviewing economists and investment fund managers, all of whom are real people with families and inner lives. But we only talked about Argentine monetary policy or Mexican growth rates. It was not part of my job to interview an Argentine or Mexican about how they were affected by their countries’ economic situation.
I took the skills I learned at that job—organizing a lot of information on the fly, juggling multiple stories, writing clean copy—to my next gig covering consumer technology and local startups at the Chicago Tribune, where I talked to a much broader range of people and put faces to trends. When I wrote about online dating, I was interviewing couples who’d met online. When I wrote about startup pivots, I’d find founders who had done just that.
In 2013, I took a new job at Basecamp to launch “The Distance,” which profiles businesses that are at least 25 years old. We started with one written feature a month. I spent hours with business owners to learn about their companies.
Last year, we switched formats to a podcast, but my objective remained the same. I’m poking into as many corners of these businesses as I can. Just last week, I asked someone, “What color were the napkins?” I love getting into the details because details move stories beyond bland quotes and rehashed anecdotes.
In my career, I’ve gone from covering business and economics in the most macro sense to the most micro. But zooming in hasn’t meant giving up the broader view. At “The Distance,” I’m exploring different angles of the economy from the inside out, figuring out what an individual business’ story says more broadly about adapting to market forces, finding a niche or surviving the Great Recession. And I can’t do these stories without drawing on everything I’ve learned about journalism—research, interviewing, organization, structure—up until now. I’m thankful that my decade-plus in the traditional journalism world enables me to do my best work for a decidedly non-traditional outlet.
If you’re interested in hearing more about how I approach stories for “The Distance,” please come to B2B Marketing’s free monthly event at Pops for Champagne in downtown Chicago on Thursday, Oct. 27. In the meantime, you can always follow me on Twitter at @VelocityWong and check out “The Distance”.
