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

Tips on getting through SBA data to find defaulted loans in your area

By Rosland Gammon on Apr 12, 2013 in Best Practices, Featured, Investigation, Investing | Banking, Rosland Gammon, Small | Private | Non-profit

Using Small Business Administration 7(a) loan data, Lynn Hulsey and Ken McCall of the Dayton Daily News found a pattern of defaults among some restaurant franchise owners, and few payments on some defaulted loans. They write:

“More than half of the 168,324 charged-off loans failed before 20 percent of the loan was repaid. More than one in three repaid only 10 percent or less of the loan. More than 7 percent did not reduce the principal on their loan at all.”

Operators of national franchises like Cold Stone Creamery received millions of dollars in loans.

Getting data is rarely easy and the SBA data was no exception, Ken says. The reporters received about five sets of data from their FOIA requests before they got the information they needed. He suggests reporters do “integrity checks” by counting different fields and records. He also says to check for missing years and coding values.

The next obstacle: the data came in an Excel format.

“Excel does weird things to data types because it can’t specify what data is what,” he says.

He came up with what seems to be an easy solution – though I wouldn’t have thought if it. He exported the information into the Access program, saved it as a .csv file and imported it into MySQL,which handles a larger pool of data, he says.

Finally, they learned SBA lenders submit loan information without a standardized system, which meant the team had to clean up more than 1 million records, Ken says.

The result was a localized searchable database showing companies that defaulted on their loans. The analysis also allowed them to see the effects the recession had on defaults and lending.

Stay tuned for more stories generated by the database, Ken says.

Knowing when to stop: ICIJ’s ‘Secrecy for Sale’ series

By Rosland Gammon on Apr 11, 2013 in Best Practices, Featured, Investigation, Investing | Banking, Rosland Gammon

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists digs into offshore accounts with its worldwide series “Secrecy for Sale: Inside the Global Offshore Money Maze.” The ongoing series kicked off April 3 after 15 months of reporting.

Tracking offshore accounts can be done with tips from insiders and some luck, says senior editor Mike Hudson. But ICIJ benefited from 2.5 million files obtained by director Gerard Ryle. He collected the files during his investigation of Australia’s Firepower scandal that involved offshore accounts and corporate fraud, according to ICIJ’s story on how it analyzed the files.

The project involved 86 journalists in 46 countries, which provided the local knowledge other reporters wouldn’t have, Mike says. But it is also riskier. While American reporters may be “snubbed at a party” or cut off from sources when someone dislikes a story, reporters in other countries may have their jobs, lives or families threatened, he says.

During the Reynolds Center’s “Great Sources, Great Storytelling” presentation at the Society of American Business Editors and Writers conference, we ran out of time to discuss knowing when to stop reporting and writing. I asked Mike, who was a panelist, when that happened for this series.

They knew they were ready to publish when they’d gotten enough names, stories and real reporting to give a good picture of what’s going on, he says. They also knew it would be an ongoing series, which meant there would still be time for other stories.

“You have to be disciplined to say I can come back to this later,” he says. “Now we can pull back to do bigger picture stories.”

Often external forces like competition scoops or pending developments force you to stop reporting, Mike says. Sometimes, it takes an editor to tell you to start writing. “With investigative reporting, we often leave ourselves too little time to write,” which is important for great storytelling, he says.

Possible good news: Mike says the ICIJ is trying to determine how to release a database with names. While it’s no sure thing, he says they’d like to release it within the next few months.

Inside Reuters’ Cancer Treatment Center of America coverage

By Rosland Gammon on Mar 26, 2013 in Best Practices, Featured, Health care, Investigation, Rosland Gammon

Cancer Treatment Center of America's Eastern Regional Medical Center. Photo by CTCA.

Not many hospitals report cancer survival rate data, says Robin Respaut of Reuters. There are no reporting regulations for those who do. When she and reporter Sharon Begley looked at the numbers, data reported by the Cancer Treatment Centers of America stood out. They write:

“What sets CTCA apart is that rejecting certain patients and, even more, culling some of its patients from its survival data lets the company tout in ads and post on its website patient outcomes that look dramatically better than they would if the company treated all comers.”

Looking into the privately held company and its numbers took some digging, says Robin, who does investigative research at Reuters. Some of the sources she found can be useful for healthcare reporters, especially those in markets that have Cancer Treatment Center of America hospitals.

For this and most stories, Robin says she does Google searches followed by lawsuit searches on PACER, Nexis and Westlaw. She also calls local courts to request searches for the parties involved.

For the Cancer Treatment Centers of America story, the searches led her to Congressional testimony in New Hampshire, where the health system sought to open a location. The company’s push to bypass the state’s certificate of need requirement generated a lot of a debate and paperwork. Through public records requests, Robin got testimony from hearings as well as additional information about it survival rates. For instance, one document included longer term studies than she had seen on the company’s website, she says.

Legal searches led to a lawsuit filed in Delaware by former president and CEO Robert Lane. That provided a huge amount of background about how the company was founded, she says. She warns that many suits use the hospitals’ names rather than “Cancer Treatment Centers of America.” For example, the Philadelphia location operates as Eastern Regional Medical Center.

Finally, Robin recommends the Association of Health Care Journalists’ Hospital Inspections site that offers federal health inspection reports.

How are new technologies affecting companies on your beat?

By Rosland Gammon on Mar 25, 2013 in Best Practices, Featured, Retail | Lifestyle, Rosland Gammon

Kavita Kumar of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch knew something was up with CPI Corp., the St. Louis-based photo studio company. She’d gotten phone calls from employees wanting to know more about rumors speculating the company’s future, she says. But nobody at the company was talking. And there were no analysts following the company.

Photos from CPI Corp.

“I decided to put together a story that would provide background and context of its current issues and how technological innovations have made its model more obsolete,” she says.

Her story is an example of using an industry perspective to localize a story when executives aren’t talking. She provides financial information from CPI’s annual reports and Securities and Exchange Commission filings.

Even so, she says she needed more than numbers to connect readers. Many readers were familiar with family portraits taken at photo studios, she says. “So I tried to write the story in a way that readers would immediately connect with that concept so they would then be more interested in knowing about this company in particular.”

She had information from employees who didn’t want their names used. She also found sources at the studios.

“Talking to customers who still frequent these places helped provide additional context and helped humanize the company’s woes,” Kavita says.

The timing of the story worked well. Since her story ran, regulatory filings about the company’s loans have generated more stories about the troubled company.

If you’re heading to SABEW next month, please attend our session on April 6. I’ll be sharing tips I’ve learned from interviewing more than 500 business journalists. I’ll also get more tips from Best in Business Award winners Michael W. Hudson of The Center for Public Integrity and Alison Young of USA Today.

Develop sources who’ll take your call when news breaks after hours

By Rosland Gammon on Mar 22, 2013 in Best Practices, Featured, Manufacturing | Large companies, Rosland Gammon

In October, Japanese-based SoftBank announce it was acquiring 70 percent of Sprint.

Kansas City Star business reporter Mark Davis was working the Sunday city desk shift as part of the paper’s rotation. But while listening to the scanner, he saw a Bloomberg report about a possible deal between Sprint and SoftBank, he says. He jumped on the story, which gave him a reprieve from the scanner.

My question for him: How do you find sources after 4 p.m. on a Sunday?

“It’s important to have cell numbers and a good repertoire with people who will answer your call,” he says.

That Sunday story evolved into a three-day series that won a Society of American Business Editors and Writers Best in Business Award for breaking news this year. Both Mark and reporter Scott Canon were named winners.

Mark, Scott and business editor Keith Chrostowski planned the stories right after the story broke, Mark says. “We needed that moment to focus,” he says. “We were at the point where we had done enough reporting to figure out what we knew.”

Mark, who covers multiple beats, says more daily coverage of Sprint would have helped them prepare for the story. “You have to be a business journalist in the broad sense to deal with what comes,” he says. “To be a better GA reporter, you have to have contacts, read a lot and talk a lot.”

What you need to know when writing about public pensions

By Rosland Gammon on Mar 18, 2013 in Best Practices, Featured, Investigation, Investing | Banking, Personal finance, Rosland Gammon

Underfunded pensions are a huge issue these days. MaryJo Webster of the St. Paul Pioneer Press spent about six months studying and investigating public pensions in Minnesota. Her work paid off with a great explanatory piece as part of the paper’s on-going series. Today, she is sharing tips to help you navigate through your state’s plans with ease.

The first step is determining the financial health of the pension plans, MaryJo says. This is when the terms “funded ratio,” “contribution deficiency” and “contribution sufficiency” kick in.

The funded ratio indicates the percentage of liabilities covered by assets, MaryJo says. Most funds are in the 70 to 75 percent range, she says. “If the plan is underfunded, that also means there is an unfunded liability,” she says.

The contribution deficiency/sufficiency will tell you if contributions cover obligations and can pay down the unfunded liability, she says. “Most experts will tell you that having some unfunded liability is OK, as long as the fund is actively paying it down each year,” MaryJo says. “But having a contribution deficiency means the fund is not headed in the right direction.”

The numbers could mean current employees have to pay some of the benefit costs for the current retirees, or that the fund is using assets that generate investment returns, MaryJo says. Or it can be both.

“The general thinking is that if a deficiency continues unchecked, eventually the fund would dry up its assets, meaning they wouldn’t benefit from investment returns, and the fund would go broke,” she says.

MaryJo used data from fiscal year-end valuation reports that pension plans release, she says. In Minnesota, the state’s legislative pension commission puts the key numbers into a series of spreadsheets. MaryJo says she pulled data from those spreadsheets to create her own. She says reporters should find out if one central organization collects and organizes the valuation reports.

But understanding the numbers is different than explaining them to readers. MaryJo says she had to wade through the jargon while not oversimplifying the information. She also wrote some paragraphs to explain basic principles about how the pensions work.

MaryJo Webster

“I worked extremely hard to ensure that the story was written in a way that even someone with zero knowledge of public pensions would be able to fully understand what they were reading,” she says. “This meant that the story ended up being significantly longer, but my editor was OK with that because he agreed that public education on this matter was nearly as important as sharing the news about the financial health of the state’s pension funds.”

MaryJo warns that media coverage of pension plans have made some public pension plans defensive and reluctant to talk. She says one PR person even asked her which anti-public pension organization had set her up to do the story.

“It took quite a bit of effort and time to convince that executive director that I wasn’t out for blood,” she says. “Since then, the executive directors have flat out told me that they would prefer I go away, but that they are grateful that I’m playing fair and asking good questions.“

For more help in covering public pensions, please see the Reynolds Center’s self-guided training with award-winner Craig Harris of The Arizona Republic: Investigating Public Pensions.

CNET’s iPhone reporting and the impact of first-person writing

By Rosland Gammon on Mar 12, 2013 in Best Practices, Featured, Investigation, Manufacturing | Large companies, Rosland Gammon

Jay Greene reported on the life of an iPhone for CNET.

Too often when I read stories with first-person references, I can’t understand why the writers chose certain moments to make themselves part of the story. I honestly don’t care where the writer sat when the coffee arrived.

That’s the challenge Jay Greene of CNET considered when his editor suggested a first-person perspective for his stories looking at the life of an iPhone. Those stories, which explored work conditions at manufacturing factories in China and environmental concerns, won a Society of American Business Editors and Writers award this month.

It took some prodding from editor Jim Kerstetter to make Jay include himself as a part of the story, he says. He says his first draft wasn’t “first person-y” enough.

“I didn’t want to be too strong of a character because the characters in the story were really interesting,” Jay says.

In addition to a good editor, Jay says first-person stories require feeling comfortable with what you know. And that takes reporting, he says.

I also asked Jay about why he chose the iPhone as his focus. His response: “Big explanatory stories need a donkey, something to help you traverse the terrain,” he says. “If you’re going to look at the lifecycle of a device, it’s the obvious one to choose.”

NPR’s Zoe Chace on her search for characters to help tell business stories

By Rosland Gammon on Mar 08, 2013 in Best Practices, Featured, Retail | Lifestyle, Rosland Gammon

Zoe Chace and the Planet Money team were brainstorming story ideas about JC Penney. The company had brought in Ron Johnson to turn things around as he had with Apple and Target. When fourth-quarter earnings time came, they decided the time was right. But, unlike most news outlets, they chose a different route.

Photo: Charlotte Business News

“We didn’t want to do a story about the bad deals investors were getting, but about how the store felt to old customers,” Zoe said. “They’re building the store of the future, but we’re not in the future yet.”

To find the customers being left behind, Zoe turned to the company’s Facebook page. That’s how she found Carol Vickery in Tallahassee. Her emails to find budget shoppers led her to Helene Abiola, a fashion blogger. She found the mother-daughter shoppers by hanging out in JC Penney’s parking lot for 45 minutes.

“It’s really uninteresting to hear about how the company is reworking if you don’t have characters” to represent the issue, Zoe says. “Always think about who loves this thing and can they be the experts.”

After her first conversation with Vickery, she knew she’d be a great source. “She was so perfect that it freaked me out,” she says.

Even so, Zoe needed to confirm some of the information, she says. To verify that the store had more shoppers before the change, Zoe called. When the official channels didn’t work, she called a department directly and asked questions about the Saturday sales. The sales clerk confirmed the crowds had dropped. “I had to make sure what Carol said was adding up,” Zoe says.

NPR transcript: Sales Are Like Drugs: What happens when a store wants customers to quit?

More Zoe Chace stories

Track real estate purchases to map a company’s footprint

By Rosland Gammon on Mar 04, 2013 in Featured, Manufacturing | Large companies, Real estate | Econ development, Sports

Kenneth Gosselin of The Hartford Courant offers a fresh idea for the real estate beat: track a local company’s footprint. He does that with ESPN’s headquarters in Bristol. Through 45 land acquisitions, the company has grown from one 20,000 square-foot building in 1979 to 18 buildings totaling almost a million square feet, he writes.

Kenneth Gosselin

Surprisingly, the story started with Hurricane Sandy, which forced the network to move productionto the West Coast because of power problems, Kenneth says. During an interview, Kenneth asked the question he recommends all reporters use: “What else is happening?” He learned the company had purchased its last property for expansion. (Kenneth says he tried to no avail to interview the owners.)

The challenge with the story was putting the pieces together, Kenneth says. “The company had never done a chronology of how it was all done,” he says.

He and an ESPN staffer used a map to track the land purchases. He then used online real estate databases to check the transactions.