Author Archive for Rosland Gammon

Rosland Gammon is a former business journalist turned college instructor. Her newsroom experience includes reporting for The Philadelphia Inquirer, and reporting and editing at Bloomberg News. Gammon currently teaches communications at Alverno College in Milwaukee. Follow her daily posts. | E-mail: Rosland Gammon

ProPublica, Planet Money tackle CDOs with comic strip, song

By Rosland Gammon on Sep 02, 2010 in Best Practices, Economy, Featured, Investigation, Investing | Banking

ProPublica’s Jake Bernstein and Jesse Eisinger tackled the very complicated issue of mortgage bonds known as collateralized debt obligations, or CDOs, to show how bankers created fake demand for the once lucrative product. They write:
“An analysis by research firm Thetica Systems, commissioned by ProPublica, shows that in the last years of the boom, CDOs had [...]

Confronted by mega-ads, WLRN radio reporter thinks locally and nationally

By Rosland Gammon on Sep 01, 2010 in Best Practices, Featured, Media | Advertising, Real estate | Econ development

Kenny Malone, reporter/producer at radio station WLRN, based at The Miami Herald, noticed big ads appearing on buildings in Dade County. Then he received a press release from a company announcing that a “mural” was going up.
“What caught my eye was how enormous it was,” Kenny says of the 32,000-square-foot vinyl ad.
His segment that aired [...]

Tax-exempt bonds benefited oil industry more than NOLA neighborhoods

By Rosland Gammon on Aug 31, 2010 in Beats, Best Practices, Energy | Utilities | Mining, Featured, Investigation, Real estate | Econ development, Story ideas

Ariella Cohen, co-founder and staff reporter at the nonprofit New Orleans news site, The Lens, found that far more of the tax-exempt bonds issued to rebuild Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina went to the oil industry than to hard-hit areas in New Orleans.
In a piece for Newsweek marking the fifth anniversary of the storm, she writes:
“New [...]

Story comments reveal tie between homeless and suicide

By Rosland Gammon on Aug 30, 2010 in Basics, Best Practices, Economy, Featured, Health care, Jobs

Annie Lowrey of the Washington Independent found a strong correlation between unemployment and suicide. Her story says the rate of suicide among unemployed people is two or three times the national average. The longer the unemployment lasts, the more likely the person will commit suicide.
The article leads with a homeless man’s posting on an online [...]

Scan SEC documents to track insider details

By Rosland Gammon on Aug 26, 2010 in Basics, Best Practices, Featured, Investigation

Brandon Bailey of the San Jose Mercury News checked Securities and Exchange Commission filings to learn that 3Par’s deal with Dell had been preceded by Hewlett-Packard negotiations. The deal may have been sidetracked when the investigation into former CEO Mark Hurd’s friendship with an HP marketing contractor started.
Brandon writes:
“Talks began July 8 when a Hewlett-Packard executive [...]

Reuters goes to ground to find homes resold at 13 times foreclosure price

By Rosland Gammon on Aug 25, 2010 in Best Practices, Economy, Featured, Investigation, Investing | Banking, Real estate | Econ development

Nick Carey of Reuters heard from an editor about a mortgage-fraud hot spot in Chicago. When he went to check it out, he found a trend happening in poorer communities. He writes of one house:
“Public records show it sold in foreclosure for $25,500 in January 2009, then resold for $355,000 in October. In between, a [...]

LV Sun reporter asks why, gets candid answer from casino CEO

By Rosland Gammon on Aug 24, 2010 in Best Practices, Featured, Transportation | Airlines | Travel

Liz Benston of the Las Vegas Sun says she’s learned that asking the same question a few different ways gets a better response. So when she asked the CEO of the soon-to-open Cosmopolitan casino in Las Vegas how the company would compete, she got a candid answer: by stealing customers from his Strip neighbors.
“He said [...]

NYT pers fin blogger opts for Sharpie instead of computer graphics

By Rosland Gammon on Aug 23, 2010 in Best Practices, Featured, Investing | Banking, Personal finance

New York Times blogger Carl Richards could have used flashy graphics with his weekly personal finance column. Instead, he opted for a Sharpie and cardstock.
“I’ve been drawing similar drawings for 10 years on whiteboard,” he says. “I told [editor Ron Lieber] one time in a restaurant, and all I had was a napkin. He said [...]

Court doc nets St. Louis P-D story about city aid to indicted developer

By Rosland Gammon on Aug 19, 2010 in Beats, Best Practices, Real estate | Econ development

Tim Logan, who covers economic development for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, said rumors were flying about a pending federal indictment against local real estate developer John Steffen, so the press release announcing it wasn’t a big surprise. However, a closer look at the filing did provide something he wasn’t expecting. His story says the city [...]