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Conrad C. Fink
Writers must always check facts to ensure accuracy, but you must pay particular attention when writing financial stories, Conrad Fink says.

Go on high alert if you aren't comfortable with financial information. Ask experts to check your story. If you aren't absolutely sure your story is accurate, have the guts to tell your editor, "This story isn't ready to go."

Accuracy is mandatory because erroneous information in financial stories can lead readers to lose money. If you do that, you haven't just made an error, Fink says. You've committed a journalistic sin.

More from Conrad C. Fink
Another interview with Fink, "Dullness and dishonesty mar many editorials," appeared in the October 1999 issue of Writing That Works.

Bio
To write clear financial stories, put numbers in context

Conrad C. Fink
Conrad C. Fink has spent much of his work life as a newspaper and wire service reporter and editor. After being vice president of the Associated Press, he became an author and award-winning teacher.

He is the William S. Morris professor of newspaper strategy and management at the Henry W. Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication and the director of the James M. Cox, Jr. Institute for Newspaper Management Studies, University of Georgia, Athens.

His latest book is Bottom Line Writing: Reporting the Sense of Dollars (2000, Iowa State University Press, 232 pp., $39.95 plus s&h; 800/862-6657; www.isupress.edu). He recently completed a book on sports writing.

Other books include Writing Opinion for Impact (1999, Iowa State University Press, 295 pp., $39.95 plus s&h; reviewed in the October 1999 issue of Writing That Works), Introduction to Professional Newswriting: Reporting for the Modern Media, second edition (1997, Addison-Wesley Publishing, 462 pp., $62) and, with Donald E. Fink, Introduction to Magazine Writing (1994, MacMillan Publishing, 416 pp., $65.50).

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