When I read Mina Kimes’s article in Fortune about the consolidation of the U.S. railroad industry and the conflict between freight operators and shippers, I got excited. She weaved the history, the fight and the legislation so effectively, I couldn’t stop reading. Producing a story like this one. which runs 4,400 words, requires some serious organizing, Mina says.
Food has been a … well, hot item for business writers this year, between recalls and price hikes and production problems caused by wild weather and other disruptions. Here’s one more serving of food business for you: The new “Facts Up Front” voluntary labeling scheme becoming more prevalent on supermarket shelves. The time peg: On [...]
An earlier version of this post quoted a previous ranking for the best newspaper app and mistakenly included two additional U.S. newspapers. A mobile strategy company that monitors 3,500 media-related apps around the world has put two U.S. news site apps on top of its list of the 10 best newspaper apps in the world. [...]
The U.S. economy led the news topics last week, powered in large part by stories about Occupy Wall Street protests, according to the PEJ News Coverage Index for Oct. 10-16, 2011. The weekly index, a survey by Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, indicated that for the third consecutive week driving coverage of [...]
Looking for a new twist on the seemingly eternal dismal housing market? This Wall Street Journal blog entry, “Slim pickings are latest headache for home sales,” piqued my curiosity and seems a likely candidate for a good local take. As writer Nick Timiraos points out, new statistics show a more than 20 percent decline in [...]
Today’s Tip: When you need information not covered by FOIA, look for discovery information in legal filings. Jim Gold of msnbc.com took advantage of a legal case to get access to Boeing’s proprietary information. A lawsuit filed by a former flight attendant, who claimed a faulty aircraft design allowed toxic fumes into the cabin, provided [...]
The free workshop, “Be a Better Business Watchdog — CAR for Business Journalists,” was originally held at the University of Washington, Sept. 13, 2011 in Seattle. WHAT YOU WILL LEARN Find and download online databases. How to use Excel spreadsheets to analyze that information. No previous experience with Excel is expected. How to translate that [...]
Jaimi Dowdell joined IRE as a training director in October 2008. She taught this workshop in Atlanta and Milwaukee in 2010. Before joining IRE, she was computer-assisted reporting editor at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for more than three years. Her duties included obtaining and analyzing data for daily and long-term stories; training staff on CAR [...]
New iPhone and earnings season notwithstanding, the most interesting story du jour continues to be Occupy Wall Street and its many cousin protests which now have spread around the globe. Consumers are mad as hell and, though fuzzy on what exactly “it” is, they’re not going to take it any more. If you’re covering local [...]
