By Flickr user Luis Argerich

Reading John Fuquay’s piece in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram about AMR Corp.’s pensions gave me flashbacks to my days of covering bankruptcy at Bloomberg News. His article helps readers understand why AMR’s projections of its pension obligations are 42 percent less than the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp.’s calculations. Pensions aren’t the easiest topics to decipher, but John’s piece made the topic understandable. He writes:

“So who’s right? And why is the money American Airlines’ parent has put aside to cover those obligations so far short of meeting them – $5.2 billion by AMR’s estimate, and about $10 billion by the pension agency’s?

As it turns out, both figures are accurate – based on professionally accepted assumptions used by each party to arrive at its estimate.”

Today’s Tip: Use 10K filings to determine how much companies put into their pension plans.

Jim Fuquay

You can access 10K filings by searching the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commissions website. You also can check  PBCG’s site to see which plans have been taken over by the government.

John says the filings offer detailed footnotes on how much companies put into the plans and the assumptions on which they base that amount. The downside, he says, is that the information gets dated the farther into the year you go.

Experts at the PBGC can explain the technical aspects of the pensions, but John also suggests finding someone who “doesn’t have a dog in the fight.”

Despite having written about pensions before, John says he had to delay the story to understand the company contributions and the impact of legislative changes on pensions.

“It got complicated, he says. “If you can’t explain it to yourself, you’re not going to explain to readers very well at all. Boil it down then boil it down again.”

Photo by iStock

Britt Johnsen and Kirsti Marohn of the St. Cloud Times used empty lots to illustrate how the recession stalled new housing developments in a three-part series. Through their reporting, they found their three-county area had 12,000 empty lots. In Avon, a city near St. Cloud, the recession thwarted plans for two developments. In part two, they write:

“The proposals were grand in scale: two developments with hundreds of upscale homes for new residents. Waters Edge was supposed to have 116 homes. Avon Estates was anticipated to have as many as 600 housing units eventually, with 88 single-family homes planned for the first phase.

But Waters Edge stands about half empty. Avon Estates has just one house. And the city is strapped with a serious financial burden of unpaid assessments.”

In an earlier post, Britt and Kirsti offered tips on calculating the number of empty lots. Today, they offer more advice:

Look at unpaid assessments to see how much empty lots cost cities.

Unpaid assessment data helped Britt and Kirsti see the impact on cities that used public financing to pay for infrastructure improvements instead of requiring developers to finance the costs.

“Analyzing the unpaid assessments revealed how cities were losing thousands of dollars each year in revenue from publically financed developments, yet were still required to make bond payments,” Kirsti says.

Reporters can check with their city treasurer offices to get this data.

Mix beats to build expertise.

Kirsti is county government reporter for the Times, and Britt was the business editor. The sources they built gave them the expertise they needed for the series, Britt says.

“I began talking with developers, real estate agents and residents about the issue of stalled developments and empty neighborhoods, and Kirsti started requesting vacant lot data in cities and speaking to local and state government sources,” Britt says.

Day 1 of Britt Johnsen and Kirsti Marohn's project was 'So many lots, so few houses.'

Britt Johnsen and Kirsti Marohn produced a great three-part series called “Gambling on Growth” for the St. Cloud Times using empty lots to show the recession’s impact on new housing developments. The series won a Sigma Delta Chi Award for excellence in journalism from the Society of Professional Journalists last year.

Through their reporting, they found their three-county area had 12,000 empty lots.

Those lots left some homeowners in stark areas watching their home values fall.

In part one of the series, they write that homeowners weren’t the only victims:

“Minnesota developers, builders and investors have lost thousands or even millions on a gamble that the housing market would keep growing. Some have gone bankrupt or owe thousands in taxes and assessments.

Elected officials and other government leaders made the same gamble. In many cases, cities bore the cost of expanding and improving roads, sewer and water lines, treatment plants and schools, all based on growth projections that didn’t materialize.

Those developments haven’t generated the property tax revenue, assessment payments and user fees city officials expected. In some cases, stalled developments have burdened cities with millions of dollars of debt.”

Both Kirsti and Britt, who’s no longer at the paper, offered some great tips on how they gathered data that didn’t exist in some of the cities they covered.

Today’s Tip: Start by determining the number of subdivisions in your area.

Britt says the story idea came from a real estate source who said there was a 10-year supply of vacant lots.

“That struck us as pretty interesting,” Britt says. “We wanted to know more about our area’s vacant lots, which were a symbol of the housing market crash, unfulfilled promises and economic hardship that touched just about everyone the last few years.”

However, when they started reporting, officials and real estate agents said the vacant lots weren’t a big deal and it was “only a matter of time” until the market turned around, Kirsti says.

“We had to keep asking the right questions and figure out what data we needed to show what was really happening,” Kirsti says.

Getting the total number of lots took time. They had to request a list of all platted subdivisions with 10 or more vacant lots, as well as the total number of lots in each one, the name of the development company and the amount of special assessments owed, Kirsti says. They created a database using Microsoft Excel to track and map 60 developments.

“Kirsti’s successful data requests were absolutely key in showing the vacancy rates, which were the basis for our story,” Britt says.

This Oshkosh military vehicle in Afghanistan is battle ready.

After years of covering a beat, earnings stories can lose their appeal for some reporters. Many reporters fall into a “plug and play” role. But that’s not what Scott Malone of Reuters did in his piece about Oshkosh Corp. Here the numbers aren’t as important as company investor Carl Icahn’s influence. He writes:

“Icahn, who owns 10 percent of the maker of military vehicles, said Oshkosh management does not do enough to boost shareholder returns. The company promises to provide investors with clearer benchmarks to measure its performance.

‘We heard the message that shareholders would like us to provide more targets to measure our progress,’ Chief Financial Officer David Sagehorn said on a conference call after the company reported better-than-expected first-quarter results. ‘As we go through our fiscal 2012, we will work on ways to provide targets.’”

Scott shared four tips for helping reporters get out of the rut.

Tip 1: Ask, “What’s the real story here?”

“Take a step back and ask yourself if the best story is really in the numbers,” Scott says. “Sometimes it is – if a company falls dramatically short of Wall Street’s expectations, readers will want to know why. But often there’s another story to be told that’s more compelling.”

Tip 2: Listen closely to quarterly conference calls to see if company executives go “off script.”

Do your homework ahead of time to know what the talking points will be so you’ll know if they’re offering new information. “Those small breaks can signal significant changes,” Scott says.

Tip 3:  Boil it down.

Scott says if the numbers are the story, don’t bog readers down trying to report on everything. Instead, focus on one or two numbers then use quotes and anecdotes to explain the rest. “You can convey as much information, and more importantly give the reader a frame to understand them in, that way.”

Tip 4: Go beyond what readers can get elsewhere.

Investors can easily access earnings reports and conference calls online. Therefore you need to “to offer exclusive information or insights, so they have a reason to choose to read your story,” Scott says.

By Photobucket user Chris Wendt

Adam Davidson of NPR’s Planet Money produced an Atlantic article and a two-part segment for Planet Money looking at the loss of jobs for unskilled workers and the growing demand for skilled workers. He explored the issue through Standard Motor Products, a 92-year-old, family-run maker of replacement parts for car engines.

In yesterday’s post, Adam offered tips about the need for context when using anecdotes to illustrate the broader trends.

“I like to dig deeply into statistics and understand what economists know about trends,” Adam says. “Then I can choose an anecdote that exemplifies the point better.”

Adam also shared details about how he narrowed the myriad of options down to focusing on South Carolina.

Today’s Tip: Think systematically about where to focus a story.

In setting out to tell the story, Adam says he ruled out New York because of the major changes in the economy during the last 30 years. Then he thought of the Greenville-Spartanburg area in South Carolina, where textile mills had shifted their job requirements from low-skilled workers to highly skilled ones. “There were pretty good jobs for people with more training and skill, and not much for those without,” Adam says.

Adam Davidson

Once he had a location, he needed an industry, he says. He chose auto part manufacturers because of the competition with Chinese imports. He visited three auto parts plants to find a “decent” company “that wasn’t trying to squeeze every penny of profit, one that seemed to care about its employees,” he says. That’s when he landed at Standard Motor Products, which competes directly with China.

He wanted to find an employee at the company in a low-skilled position, which he defines as a job that takes less than a day to learn, he says. He also wanted to focus on someone with the ability to develop skills, but unable to go to school. Knowing he had a radio segment to produce, he also wanted someone who was talkative and open. After meeting a “few dozen Standard workers,” Madelyn “Maddie” Parlier stood out. She was “smart, open, so crystal clear about her condition in the world, her own bad choices, and her challenges,” he says. “I knew she’d play well on the radio and would be a great person to write about.”

A screenshot from The Atlantic's "Making It in America." Photo by Dean Kaufman

Adam Davidson of NPR’s Planet Money set out to look at the state of unskilled workers in America. Specifically, he wanted to focus on the loss of jobs for unskilled workers and the growing demand for skilled workers.

“This struck me as a very serious issue, it means that, for many Americans, the American dream is no longer a possibility,” Adam says. “I wanted to understand, from a business perspective, why it made sense to pay relatively high salaries to skilled workers, but not to pay relatively low salaries to unskilled workers.”

Adam explores the issue through Standard Motor Products, a 92-year-old, family-owned maker of replacement parts for car engines. The story became a 9,000-word article in The Atlantic, and a two-part segment for Planet Money.

For his Atlantic piece, he offers readers detailed information about workers. Of Madelyn “Maddie” Parlier, he writes:

“Maddie’s senior year started hopefully. She had finished most of her high-school requirements and was taking a few classes at nearby Tri-County Technical College. She planned to go to a four-year college after graduation, major in criminal justice, and become an animal-control officer. Around Christmas, she found out she was pregnant. She did finish school and, she’s proud to say, graduated with honors. “On my graduation, I was six months pregnant,” she says. “Six months.” The father and Maddie didn’t stay together after the birth, and Maddie couldn’t afford to pay for day care while she went to college, so she gave up on school and eventually got the best sort of job available to high-school graduates in the Greenville area: factory work.”

Adam Davidson

Today’s Tip: Don’t just shoot for the anecdote.

“Economists are often frustrated with us reporters because we’ll make a big deal about some single story without placing it in context,” Adam says. “I’ve always tried to understand the context deeply, and then find the anecdotal example that can illustrate the broader trends.”

The context Adam needed for this story was U.S. history.  In the past, people willing to work hard could improve their condition, but that changed in the last 30 years, he says. The story includes data to help readers understand the broader issue. For instance, he writes: “In the 10 years ending in 2009, factories shed workers so fast that they erased almost all the gains of the previous 70 years; roughly one out of every three manufacturing jobs—about 6 million in total—disappeared.”

Coming tomorrow: Details on how Adam narrowed his focus.

Micheline Maynard

I don’t usually blog about blogs, but I liked a post by Micheline Maynard, a Forbes contributor and senior editor of Changing Gears. | Editor’s note: Micki Maynard also wrote the Reynolds Center’s Beat Basics package on Manufacturing. 

In the Changing Gears post that caught my eye, she wrote about Austin, Texas, looking to boost its share of automotive companies. Micheline has covered the automotive industry for years, including for The New York Times and her four books include “The End of Detroit: How the Big Three Lost Their Grip on the American Car Market,” which “predicted” the collapse.

Dusk on Sixth Street at Sixth Street & Trinity Street, Austin, Texas. Photo: Larry D. Moore

So I asked her for advice on look-ahead reporting, also known as the “future word” among Bloombergians.

Tip One: Know where your industries and suppliers are located.

“That way, you’ll be able to tell when an industry is headed in a direction that might seem new or fresh,” Micheline says.

Tip Two: Build sources at economic development organizations.

“They’re generally the first place an investor goes when it’s time to get serious,” she says.

Tip Three: Build sources among lawyers, commercial real estate agents and site-selection consultants.

“It’s a small world, and people know each other,” she says. “The Southern states often work collaboratively to attract big factories and other investments, so if you know someone in Alabama, they can introduce you to someone in Mississippi, and so on.”

The Jewish Daily Forward found that Kars4Kids spent just $6 million of its $29 million in gifts on programs, such as this Jewish summer camp.

Josh Nathan-Kazis of The Jewish Daily Forward looked into two charities, Kars4Kids and Oorah Inc., and found that less than 25 percent of the $29 million they collected in 2010 was spent on providing programs. The organizations collect donated cars for their mission to support Orthodox outreach to non-Orthodox Jews. Josh also found that Kars4Kids spent $8.3 million on advertising in 2010.

Today’s Tip: Check with your state attorney general for information on charities.

“Charities are required to register with the offices of attorneys general in states where they raise more than a certain amount of money, and they file 990s and other documents with those offices,” Josh says. Here’s a list of the attorneys general by state.

Josh Nathan-Kazis

Charity registries maintained by the state attorneys general offer more information than reporters can get from IRS tax Form 990 filings, which are available online through GuideStar, he says. (Another source for 990s online is Foundation Center.) In New York, the website of the attorney general includes 990s and independent auditor’s reports, which interpret the 990s and lay out any financial problems organizations have. IRS determination letters, which grant an organization tax-exempt status, and certificates of incorporation are also often available, he says.

If you’d like to know more about nonprofits, check out the self-guided training on Investigating Private Companies and Nonprofits that will be available next week on BusinessJournalism.org. Can’t wait? Here’s a recording from yesterday’s Webinar with Chris Roush, business journalism professor at the University of North Carolina, on finding public information on nonprofits.

Susan Berfield of Bloomberg Businessweek used the municipal-bond database, EMMA, to get the story on a failed plant in Moberly, Mo.

Using municipal-bond data, Susan Berfield of Bloomberg Businessweek produced a well-researched and -written “tale of economic desperation” in Moberly, Mo.

She details the town’s relationship with “a short, chubby, well-dressed executive from Beverly Hills named Bruce Cole.” His company, Mamtek, planned to build an artificial-sweetener plant that would employ 612. Excited city officials dove into the deal within three weeks of meeting him and approved $39 million in municipal bonds for the company.

Susan writes:

“In August 2011, it came time for Mamtek to make its first payment on the principal of the bond, a sum of $3.2 million. Cole’s company didn’t have the money. It never did, as it turned out.”

Today’s Tip: Use bond-offering documents for inside scoops on municipal-bond deals.

Susan Berfield

“They provide hundreds of pages of interesting details in terms of what the company is telling officials,” Susan says. “The trustee for the bond is required to make public what’s going on at the company.”

You can use the Electronic Municipal Market Access system, better known as EMMA, which provides free access to information about the municipal-bond market, to find bond-issue documents. Susan said she used the name of the banker listed on those documents to start gathering information. She was referred to a PR staffer at the bank, who sent her additional documents she needed.

“Go to every primary source you can to see what you can get,” she says.

You can learn more about how to use EMMA during a free Reynolds Center’s Webinar March 27-28. One of the presenters will be Yamil Berard who spoke with me last year about using EMMA for her investigative story at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram on conduit bonds.

Susan said some people declined to talk because of investigations into Mamtek by the state and by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. So she used LinkedIn to find their connections to employees who had less at stake, she says.

The Reynolds Center also has a free Webinar on Feb. 28 on sourcing through LinkedIn.

ING Direct bank opened this cafe in Vancouver, B.C., last year. Photo by Flickr user jason_baker84.

When ING Direct bank decided to open a San Francisco “café,” Aaron Glantz of The Bay Citizen didn’t just focus on the “13 flat-screen televisions; beanbag chairs; a deli counter that sells coffee, cookies and sandwiches; and plenty of tables and outlets for customers using the free wireless Internet access.”

He talked to consumer advocates who suspected ING chose a café instead of a traditional branch with tellers, vaults and an ATM to circumvent Community Reinvestment Act regulations about lending to low-income borrowers. Aaron says those regulations would apply if ING opened a storefront that took deposits. The bank denies that’s its reason, but it does accept retail deposits only at its Wilmington, Del., headquarters and not at its eight U.S. retail outlets elsewhere, such as the one in San Francisco, where it makes loans. That’s when Aaron turned to the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council for information.

Today’s Tip: Use the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council to dig into the lending practices of local banks.

Aaron Glantz

The council’s website links to reports filed by financial institutions under the Community Reinvestment Act and the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, Aaron says. Reports for the former show whether a bank lends to low-income customers in a given metro area. Reports for the latter give detailed information about the race and specific location of home borrowers by Census tract for the whole country.

The reports showed ING had an “outstanding” rating under the Community Reinvestment Act for its lending in the Wilmington area, but also indicated “the bank’s lending elsewhere skewed toward wealthy customers — including those in the Bay Area, where upper-income borrowers accounted for approximately three-fourths of ING Direct’s loans,” Aaron writes.