Mark Twain is reputed to have advised something along the lines of “Buy land. They aren’t making any more of it.” The exact wording of Twain’s 100-year-old quip is difficult to nail down, but investors these days aren’t having any problem grasping the general concept. With the stock market akin to a whirl on the [...]
Janet Cho of the Cleveland Plain Dealer emailed me another tip after reading yesterday’s post about getting better responses from man-on-the-street interviews.
Today’s Tip: “Treat the people you’re talking to as the ‘real’ experts and have them respond to or comment on the news of the day,” Janet says.
Credit unions are shoring up a stronger asset base, more members and are in a prime position to snag market share from banks in the next few years. It’s an industry business journalists shouldn’t neglect as the banking scene evolves. Credit unions are financial institutions that are similar to banks. They offer savings and checking [...]
A McClatchy Newspapers story based on “man-on-the-street” interviews with small-business owners nationwide garnered national attention recently because of its findings. With help from the chain’s reporters in Kansas City, Miami Herald, Biloxi, Sacramento and Charlotte, national economics correspondent Kevin G. Hall article asked whether excessive regulation and fear of higher taxes discourage small-business owners from hiring, as some have postulated.
President Obama outlined what’s being called a $3 trillion plan for deficit reduction Monday, and predictably proponents and opponents are vocal about the pros and cons of the plan. But how will it affect the businesses on your beat? Obviously that’s speculative at this point — the plan is just making its way to Congress [...]
I spent last weekend helping out a group of college kids take over the second-largest homeless newspaper in the United States. They swooped in without knowing each other, the community or the issues within it, and they managed to produce a robust website and print edition from scratch in just a couple of days. Helping [...]
President Obama signed the America Invents Act, a sort of patent-approval reform, on Friday — which makes now a good time for ferreting out some interesting innovation, inventing and technology stories on your beat. The bill – reportedly the first major patent overhaul since 1952, which is sort of mind-boggling when you consider the technology changes and explosion [...]
We’ve all had interviews where we just couldn’t get sources to relax and open up. Reporters at The Seattle Times had tried to profile Ada Healey, vice president of the investment company, Vulcan Real Estate, which is owned by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. But the reporters had come away empty-handed. So this summer, editors challenged [...]
Clearance on Halloween merchandise! All Christmas-themed goods 25 percent off! Just kidding, but barely. It’s still officially summertime on the calendar, but that hasn’t stopped merchants from trotting out spooky costumes, reindeer lawn ornaments and other crucial elements of the fourth-quarter make-it-or-break-it spending mania. According to this USA Today article, “Retailers are starting the holiday [...]
