The Business of Communicating

When I was deciding to enter journalism school at the University of Missouri-Columbia in the late 1980s, I was lured by both the prestige of attending such an esteemed training ground for accomplished journalists and the promise of making my own contribution to the field. The true deal clincher, however, had to do with my non-career aspirations: I could earn the degree without having to take so much as a modicum of math—or any course that dealt with numbers, be it accounting, statistics, economics or finance.

Just a month out of J-school, my naivete in thinking that by joining the world of wordsmiths, I could avoid altogether the world of numbers, became clear. As an intern at a nonprofit organization in Washington, D.C., I spent the summer fact-checking page after page of financial contributions that politicians had received from various political action committees. When at last I became a paid communicator, I was again forced to work with numbers on a daily basis—from reporting on mergers and acquisitions at an international publishing company to writing news briefs at the Securities and Exchange Commission to editing articles written by economists at the Federal Reserve Bank. With exposure and experience, business writing went from being a necessary difficulty to my chosen specialty.

The reality is that in today's world, there is no separating business from communication or communication from business. Professional communicators at corporations, newspapers and universities alike must be able to understand the basics of business and the numbers that drive it. But above all, we need to be able to figure out the story that figures have to tell. (As Irving R. Levine once said, "Statistics are a little bit like a bikini: what they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital.")

Likewise, those who earned business and technology degrees from this fine institution and others cannot escape communication. As Phil Marie, Webster Alum and Senior Vice President of Network and Web Operations at NASDAQ, says in this issue, with enough time and money, you can do anything; the key is being able to sell your ideas through lucid and persuasive communication. In his Dean's Message, Benjamin Akande argues that such persuasive communication often takes place face-to face—blasphemy to all of the voice-mail and e-mail addicts out there. A former political speechwriter, aspiring book author and award-winning teacher, Associate Professor Doug O'Bannon rises to a communication challenge—no matter what form it takes. We hope you do, too.

Jeryldine Tully

Editor

notabene@webster.edu

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