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A couple of months ago, I wrote a column announcing several changes in IBJ’s newsroom, including the addition of a Q&A column we’ve called “Last word” that appears near the back of the paper.
I didn’t get into much detail about it then because the column was about several changes not just in the print issue but in the newsroom overall. So today, I wanted to spend a bit more time talking about this new Q&A feature.
Longtime readers might recall that, for a time, IBJ ran a short Q&A on page 2A. That was one of my favorite features because it gave us a chance to get a wide variety of people into the paper. But what we found—and what was especially frustrating for reporters—is that the space dedicated to that story was so small. It was only about 550 words, and week after week, reporters would turn in 1,000-word Q&As and be frustrated when we’d cut them down.
Eventually, we made a number of changes in the paper that included eliminating the Q&A. But I’ve thought in the years after that something has been missing from our print issues.
So this fall, we brought back the Q&A—in a much longer format.
We strive for interviews that are about 1,200-1,500 words, although IBJ Managing Editor Samm Quinn was happy to let the reporters know this week that I went way over that word limit with my interview of Jessica Gendron, the CEO and owner of The Center for Leadership Excellence & Career Consultants.
We’ve added a few other guidelines for the new version of our Q&As. We are interviewing only businesspeople—and by that I mean people who work at public companies and private corporations. This particular feature won’t include people who work for government, nonprofits, universities (we had one higher ed person early on, before we implemented this guideline), or even business-related organizations, such as chambers of commerce.
It’s my rule, and it has been a somewhat controversial one in our newsroom. Interestingly, many of the people reporters initially planned to feature worked for nonprofits and government. I understand that inclination. Elected officials, policymakers and people working at nonprofits are often more readily available for interviews and easier to schedule with little notice. For people working on deadline all the time, that’s a big deal.
But we are a business journal. And while we construe that broadly and dedicate significant resources to covering government, politics and nonprofits, I want this Q&A to tell the stories of people who own companies or are executives in companies and are faced every day with challenges that affect profits and losses.
The result has already been a series of interesting conversations with leaders of companies large (including Allied Solutions CEO Pete Hilger, for example) and small (Crimson Tate shop owner Heather Givans). We’ve had executives from the world of sports (race car driver Graham Rahal and Pacers Sports & Entertainment’s Joe Graziano), venture investing (entrepreneur John Thompson), health care (OrthoIndy’s John Ryan), design (architect Stephen Alexander) and other industries.
These are stories we’re excited to tell—particularly through these executives’ own words. We edit the Q&As. The vast majority of these conversations are much longer than we have room to print. But the goal is to let these leaders tell their stories or talk about challenges they are facing in their businesses.
We’d love to know whom you’d like to see us feature next. Send ideas to lweidenbener@ibj.com.•
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Weidenbener is editor and assistant publisher of IBJ and assistant publisher of the Indiana Lawyer. Reach her at lweidenbener@ibj.com.
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