I’m finishing Day 1 at the Society of American Business Editors and Writers’ annual conference in Dallas. This post will be far less newsy, because the session was for journalists, by journalists — many of my posts Saturday will also follow this theme.

4:30 p.m. NOW: New York Times business editor Larry Ingrassia, SmartMoney editor in chief Jonathan Dahl and personal finance authors John Wasik and Liz Weston gave advice to SABEW members about what journalists should do differently to cover personal finance.

“Why did we get into this field? To help people,” Dahl began, emphasizing the importance of this type of coverage. There are few topics more helpful than advising people on their money.

But, for multiple reasons, people aren’t getting it. Journalists don’t want to explain complicated issues, fearing viewers or readers won’t understand. We don’t include emotion, so the audience can’t relate. Editors put the stories in the business section of the newspaper, or the financial segment on local TV news. People who need the information — those who are uneducated on personal finance — rarely look in the business section for news.

As a result, the average person knows very little. “Someone asked me if she were allowed to make more than the minimum payment on her credit card,” Weston said, which drew gasps from the journalists in the room. For the record, you can (and should) pay more than the minimum on your debts. Weston and Wasik said the financial crisis has led many others to retreat entirely from debt, to the point that they can’t build their credit scores because they refuse to get credit cards.

Because people don’t seek out good advice in personal financial journalism, they turn to brokers and their uneducated friends, who all give them bad advice. It’s a problem for the 70 percent of the population without college degrees, who often don’t have research or investigative skills, and for students who are paying for their education though loans, said Gail MarksJarvis, the Chicago Tribune’s personal finance columnist.

“One of the reasons student get into terrible debt is that they don’t know what terrible debt is,” she said.

Here are the journalists’ tips for driving home advice to an audience:

• Just in time: Give people what they need to know when they need to know it. Tell personal finance stories with a “news of the day” approach. Re-tell stories that never go away, such as how to get a mortgage loan, with a fresh update.
• It’s not rocket science: Show the audience that personal finance isn’t hard to understand, and people shouldn’t avoid it. Instead of keeping details in percentage form, break down the numbers. Tell them how much something will cost per month or per year.
• Don’t forget emotion: Play to what the audience is thinking about, whether it’s retirement concerns or paying for college. Show them through humanized examples why it’s important, why they should be concerned, and end with a solution.

NEXT: Day 1 is in the books. I’ll be back on Saturday, starting with the chief executive officers of the Container Store and Whole Foods, two companies that exist for reasons other than profit.

PREVIOUS: Elizabeth Warren, President Obama’s consumer-credit adviser, defends consumer-protection agency against Congressional attack.