March is out!

Workaday, workaday. I can understand why some folks might not want to cover ports and railroads, but if you dig just a little, you find good, solid stories worth writing. María Elena Verdezoto in Quito did exactly that, explaining why the Port of Manta wants to dig down and make the port deeper. This is good solid journalism, and the sources can be easy-going and thankful a journalist is paying attention. We need more of it.

Sometimes the story is right in front of you. Brazil Editor Carlos Adese saw a few companies talking about leaving as an indicator of something big: business costs in Miami are rising fast. I get a lot of story pitches from people who want to cover the gigantic company or the huge person. That is fine, but we also need to think like our readers: Are costs rising? Should I open an office? Where? Always welcome information.

Is your phone becoming a TV? Is you cable company trying to sell you long-distance? A prickly, meaningless word, convergence, comes to life in this story by Spanish Editor Andrés F. Velázquez. I am in Brazil at the moment and this is no U.S. phenomenon, as his story shows: TV is full of ads touting the idea, and you can bet people will start telling either their phone company or their cable company bye-bye in exchange for a lower monthly bill.

Back to how to see the story for the trees. News Editor Forrest Jones could have written our March cover story about American, or Continental, or TAM. He could have called up a bunch of airline analysts and asked if the business will recover, or not. (Yawn.) Instead, he dug into exactly how the carriers are getting by in a time of crazy oil prices and competition from every direction. And it turned out to be ... software. Great stuff.