Writing around analysts

One of the bigger problems new writers to Latin Trade face is how to write a story without their standby sources: analysts. I have nothing against these folks personally. (Even the ones who went to jail in the last few years for lying to journalists -- and by extension shareholders -- on a daily basis.) But they don't belong in your story. There are some economics pieces that might call for a general economist, perhaps, and we do some economic shorts that rely on commentary from ratings agencies, but your company story should "expert free" so to speak. That means, unless your expert is central to the story, no financial analysts, no academics, no consultants.

Get involved with people who have money on the table. Executives, customers, employees, unionists, shareholders, suppliers. They will be interesting, much more interesting.

Why? Because, like any outsider, experts have nothing to lose talking to you, and they are pretty much tempted to make more of things than they really are. Plus, it's all boilerplate, stuff any journalist knows or could find out, so talking to them becomes way to source a story without having to dig, that is, without having to do any actual journalism.

Bottom line: boring. Here's a clip from Business Week in which the writer manages to get around the problem by talking to... actual people. The owner. His friends. An industry supplier. A former colleague of the owner. He does mention analysts, and clearly talked to them, but no quotes.