Screenshot from Aarti Shahani's NPR piece

Aarti Shahani has a great radio piece about Zynga Inc., the company behind apps and online games including FarmVille and Words with Friends. The segment features CEO Mark Pincus, who declares at one point “I’m not the best speller” while playing Scramble with Friends.

Aside from great quotes and audio from inside the company, Aarti also offers analogies to help readers comprehend information. For instance, she notes that the 15 terabytes of data a day that company collects equals the 5 million copies of “War and Peace.” For that, she says, she had to call her technological literate brother.

Today’s Tip: Radio requires listening for moments when the voice is memorable, Aarti says.

Radio is a new medium for Aarti, who recently finished her graduate studies at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Unlike print, you have to listen for tonal language and write a script around it versus just looking for great quotes, she says.

“It forces you to listen to your sources more richly,” Aarti says. “In radio, the voice of the source is more powerful.”

She also says radio requires conveying information quickly. Her segment, which ran on NPR’s Morning Edition, is five minutes long. The introduction to her segment gives listeners some perspective. For instance, we learn that Pincus is worth $1.3 billion.

To provide more factoids, she wrote a separate web version, she says.

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

Even as fallout from the mortgage market meltdown still reverberates throughout the economy, ominous rumblings suggest that a similar bust in the student loan market could be the next big financial crisis.

According to a just-out report by the National Association of Consumer Bankrtupcy Attorneys, for example, 80 percent of respondents report a surge in prospective filers with student loan debt – including not only the students or former students but parents who co-signed loans, as well.  The release claims that loans to parents of college-age children have jumped a mind-boggling 75 percent since 2005-2006, and that delinquincies are common.  (Student loan debt is generally not dischargeable in bankruptcy so attorneys in that field have something of a vested interest in demonizing it – but I have no reason to doubt the findings as presented.)

The headlines beat on.  “The Student Loan is Crippling American Families,” reports Forbes, and a brand new Federal Reserve report shows that school loans helped fuel a $16.6 billion jump in non-revolving consumer debt in December, BusinessWeek reports.   And last month the credit-scoring firm FICO reported that many bank risk managers it has surveyd expected defauls on student loans to rise.  Debtors in the U.S. currently owe three-quarters of a trillion dollars in educational loans!

And if that isn’t burden enough, a lower interest rate set by Congress in 2007 may expire this July 1, effectively doubling the rate on Stafford loans for millions of borrowers, the Huffington Post reports.

Add in state budget woes, controversy over tuition inflation, the election cycle and it’s a complex – and at the moment, politicized – topic.  But against the backdrop of these sorts of headlines, the fact that many families probably getting under way with the application process and the dreaded FAFSA financial aid form-filling,  along with  various White House proposals related to college funding afoot (here’s a Dept. of Education summary), along with other developments in the market, you might want to plan a run at the topic soon.

Digging inside the market

A mutli-faceted approach to a student loan package might include the issues that face indebted borrowers now in the jobs market, as well as dilemmas being tackled by prospective and current students – and their parents – about borrowing resources and decisions.  What degrees are worth the debt and which programs, in hindsight, fail to pay for themselves?  What advice do current debtors have for upcoming students and prospective borrowers?  Go through CPAs, certified financial planners and other independent financial advisors; they may be able to hook you up with clients who will open their books and allow you to illustrate a story with detailed cash-flow information that can show how school loans affect a family’s finances and choices years after graduation.

Don’t forget stories about alternatives to borrowing – like working a few years ahead of college to save up, choosing AP or community college course to save on university tuition and choosing careers or jobs paths that afford student loan forgiveness.  Here’s a story from Californiaabout a proposal that student ride free in school but promise to pay a percentage of their income for decades after graduation.

Student loan stories generally should include clip-and-save (or click-and-save) sidebars and resources lists for readers;  FinAid.org is a good place to start.

Calculating the real cost of attendance

Just to play devil’s advocate: Student budgets and lifstyles are seldom mentioned in stories that bewail educational loan debt.  The notion that tuition inflation and books are solely responsible for burdensome student loan debt – rather than factors within a student’s control – is pervasive and makes for one-sided coverage of the issue.  I would suggest — through first-hand experience watching the changing retail and lifestyle scene at my own alma mater –  that travel, car ownership and general lifestyle expectations of the student population have burgeoned right along with the cost of credit hours …  and that some of that loan debt can be attributed to spring break trips, SUVs and salon shampoos.

Check out the “cost of attendance” pages at schools near you, or schools many regional students tend to flock to.  Just as an example I checked out the COA page at the University of Wisconsin (Madison) — where room and board costs seem to be predicated on a $1,000 a month average, along with another $100 a week in ‘miscellaneous’ expenses.   I’m a midlde-aged homeowner in a moderately high cost-of-living area and I spend less than $1,000 a month on shelter and food, and I sure wouldn’t be spending $100 a week on ‘misc’ if it took borrowed money to do so.  All told the room, board and incidentals at UW and many other schools with similar advisories on their sites total more than $50,000 over the course of acquiring a four-year degree.

I’m not saying students should live in a tent on boxed macaroni & cheese and water for four years, but there’s ample
precedent for living modestly and getting out of school with the minimum of debt.  Stories taking a detailed look at the budget of some local college students – and I mean really looking at their daily receipts and credit card statements — could be quite enlightening and really round out coverage of the ticking student debt bomb.

A screenshot from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel series "A Case of Shattered Trust."

A story by Raquel Rutledge and Rick Barrett that won the Barlett & Steele Silver Award for 2011 has been selected to be part of the “Best Business Writing 2012,” a book to be published in June by Columbia University Press.

Rutledge and Barrett, reporters at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, received the silver award in the 2011 Barlett & Steele Awards for Investigative Business Journalism for their series “A Case of Shattered Trust.”

Details in their own words about of their investigation into one of the nation’s largest manufacturers of alcohol wipes describing filthy conditions at the plant nearby are in this behind-the-story account.

Dean Starkman, editor of the Columbia Journalism Review’s The Audit and one of four editors for the Best in Business book, said this about the collection of business writing:

“The Best Business Writing 2012,” is as the name implies, the first of what we’re hoping to be an annual series that collects, well, the best. We want these books to highlight great journalism about business (and finance and
the economy) in all its diversity: from muckraking exposes (like this one) to classic corporate profiles, economics writing, business columns, blog posts, whatever. The publication or medium really doesn’t matter.

We’re now at work collecting — and soliciting — candidates for “BBW2013″. If you-all do, or see, anything we should know about, send me a note.”

Starkman’s co-editors in “The Best Business Writing 2012″ are Martha Hamilton, Ryan Chittum and Felix Salmon.

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.

That’s a blow to a stumbling jobs market and a hit to consumer and worker confidence, though investors probably love the idea of trimming 20 percent of labor costs.  (There’s always a ‘who benefits?’ silver lining story somewhere…)

In 2011, tens of thousands of workers in the financial sector lost jobs, along with other big job cuts at companies like Pfizer, Cisco and Delta. While American Airlines is the first big job-cuts announcement of the year, it’s a sure bet it won’t be the last.

And with the New Year just under way, you might want to consider some sort of tracking feature — a blog, a standing graphic in your publication or online, or a monthly roundup — to chronicle mass layoffs this year in your region.   Seek out the pink-slipped workers and document their job searches, career retraining, personal finance challenges and other aspects of unemployment.  Joblessness and the mismatch between corporate expectations and what candidates have to offer is one of the most unexplored stories of this era, as I mentioned in a previous blog post about the so-called talent gap. 

Readers love longitudinal features that let a story unfold throughout the year, and they are great background for presenting ongoing economic data and statistics.  Why not give it a try this year?

Finding laid-off workers is easy; visit your area’s workforce commission, go to job fairs, ask financial advisers to refer clients, call executive recruiting firms, talk with local union leaders and consider soliciting reader stories through a blurb in the publication or online.

Meanwhile, bookmark this Bureau of Labor Statistics monthly mass layoffs report; it’s really a trove of data that slices mass layoff numbers by industry, occupation and by state.  (A mass layoff is one involving 50 or more workers.)  Perusing the report, it’s surprising how many events fall under radar screens; according to the BLS report there were 2,433 layoff events in December alone.  (Note that this report lists layoffs of any duration; it may be that some job losses recorded are not permanent; that’s an important distinction to make when ferreting out local events.) Contact the BLS and your state labor department for documentation about the employers reporting the job cuts.

And check out the federal labor department’s WARN pages — the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act requires employers to provide 60 days notice of plant closings and mass layoffs, among other provisions.  It’s another way to keep tabs on pending job cuts in your area.

Andrew Leckey

The Greatest Generation of business journalists will come from today’s university students.

A perfect storm of events, technology and globalization has equipped this generation to better understand and effectively report on the world of money than any that preceded it.

Its words and visuals for financial issues that matter will also carry faster and further than ever before to a mass audience.

Just as Tom Brokaw couldn’t dub the Depression/World War II generation “The Greatest” until long after the fact, time and perspective will be required here as well.

But here are seven advantages this generation has going for it:

• It has seen a dramatic economic downturn and volatile financial markets directly impact family finances. Job security, home values and money issues have been as common dinner discussion topics as the weather. This generation “gets it.”
• It has watched giant investment scams, inflated executive compensation, corporate failures and government bailouts dominate the news. As a result, it takes nothing for granted and possesses a healthy degree of skepticism.

• Instant access to financial data and information, the ability to report immediately and multimedia platforms help this generation tell dynamic stories. There are apps for everything. Numbers-heavy data can be tailor-made to the interests of consumers and readily accessible through clicks, pull-downs and other features.
• The branding of most everything is an ongoing part of its life. There is understanding that products, services, companies and industries may not last forever. Web and cellular phone leadership, for example, has changed hands many times in this generation’s lifetime. Car brands come and go. You must keep up. These young people mourned Steve Jobs’ passing and hope Apple Inc. innovations continue unabated.
• An array of views on current events—from the reliable and intelligent to the ridiculous and superfluous–barrage it daily through Internet and video channels. This generation must make daily personal decisions on what is credible. This drives home the point that thoughtful and accurate reporting on business and the economy can play a vital role.
• Stories have become global with any region capable of rocking the worldwide economy and markets. Opportunities in business journalism similarly stretch around the world. Major international news organizations that hire reporters have clout and are fond of bilingual reporters. Closer to home, local media now considers business to be an unquestioned lead item that attracts wide interest.
• The political debate is focused on the economy and other issues that involve money. Federal funding, Social Security, healthcare, trade, immigration and the environment all have dollar signs in their equations. History’s free-enterprise economist Adam Smith or government-interventionist John Keynes would fit right into today’s arguments in Washington.

These add up to a generation of journalists that doesn’t need to have the importance of business and the economy impressed upon it. The difference between today’s students and those of even five or 10 years ago is significant. They’ve lived in the maelstrom of business and the economy all their lives, many of their fellow students major in those subjects and business journalism is increasingly being offered in university curriculums.

That’s not to say that, like many other generations, it may miss its golden opportunity. Or that we as business journalists and educators might overlook our responsibility to keep this group’s interest alive in the name of good journalism and public service. Finding pertinent numbers, being a watchdog for the benefit of society and intelligently simplifying difficult concepts are demanding tasks.

I am, of course, biased because I spend a considerable amount of time with this generation as I teach courses in business journalism. I have also had opportunity to talk with many students in other countries. More than my parents’ generation, my own generation or those leading up to the current one, this generation is trying hard to understand the complex business and economic world it has inherited. I always learn something new from these young people taking a fresh view.

Whether it becomes the Greatest Generation of business journalists remains to be seen, but it is further along and better-equipped than its predecessors. Doing a better job of coverage will make a difference in its future and that of subsequent generations. Money isn’t everything, but it has powerful effect on the lives of everyone around the world. Assuming the responsibility of reporting on business and the economy accurately, creatively and relentlessly is a first step on the road to greatness.

Eagle Market in Globe opened in the 1920s. This was taken in the 1950s. Photo submitted by Diana Carey Hines

• Arizona’s 100 years in business

Arizona turns 100 on Feb. 14 and a team of print and web journalists have been scurrying for months to pull together fun and educational ways to celebrate the event.

This crowd-sourced package of photos will interest business journalists … or anyone interested in business or the Southwest.

The Arizona Republic and azcentral.com turned to their readers to gather photos representing business in Arizona.

From the editors:

“Our requests for vintage business images to help commemorate Arizona’s 100th birthday on Feb. 14 resulted in a deluge of historic photo submissions from throughout the state.”

Betty Beard, who pulled the project together shared details about photos and other memorabilia that came in from residents: Old photos capture Arizona. “I was touched at how many people dug out photos from scrapbooks, closets, drawers and picture frames and took the time to scan and e-mail them,” Beard said. “Unfortunately, we can only offer a sampling of what is out there.”

Arizona became a state on February 14, 1912. It was the last of the 48 contiguous states to be admitted to the union.

Keep posted at @azcentral on Twitter. I hear that from Feb. 14, followers will be in for a historic treat.

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.”

The Particulars

Instructor: Diana B. Henriques,
longtime financial writer
for The New York Times and
author of the best-seller,
“The Wizard of Lies: Bernie Madoff
and the Death of Trust”

Location: Online

When: Noon and 4 p.m. ET
Aug. 13

Register for this free,
hourlong Webinar.

Photo by flickr user ElvertBarnes

All that reporting, all those documents, all those late nights. But you finally got that story!

Now, how do you get people to read it? In today’s congested media marketplace, storytelling is more important than ever – but too often, it is the neglected element in business journalism.

Ask too many business reporters about storytelling, and they’ll say, “Oh, yeah – I have an anecdotal lede.” In fact, great stories are built from the ground up, beginning with reporting techniques that empower you when it’s time to write and moving on to eye-opening tools borrowed from the worlds of screenwriting and suspense fiction.

In this Webinar, you will learn these techniques to tell great stories from Diana B. Henriques, longtime financial writer for The New York Times and the author of the best-seller, “The Wizard of Lies: Bernie Madoff and the Death of Trust.”

Author Diana B. Henriques signs copies of "The Wizard of Lies." Photo by Michel Duarte

Sign up for this free Webinar.

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN

How to:

• Gather the telling details while chasing the story.
• Deepen your story with universal characters from folklore and myths.
• Use techniques from screenwriting and potboilers to strengthen your writing.

YOUR INSTRUCTOR

Diana B. Henriques became a contributing writer to The New York Times in December 2011, after more than two decades at the paper.

As a senior financial writer at The Times, she specialized in investigative reporting on white-collar crime, market regulation and corporate governance. She turned her coverage of Bernie Madoff’s $65 billion Ponzi scheme into a best-selling book, “The Wizard of Lies: Bernie Madoff and the Death of Trust.”

She was part of a reporting team that was named a Pulitzer finalist in 2003 for its coverage of the aftermath of the Enron scandals. She was also a member of a team that won a 1999 Gerald Loeb Award for covering the near-collapse of  the hedge fund, Long Term Capital Management.

She was a Pulitzer finalist in 2005 for exposing the exploitation of American soldiers by financial services companies. For that series, she also received the George Polk Award, Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting and the Worth Bingham Prize.

FIRST-TIME ATTENDEES

Check out our Technology Help Page for connectivity requirements, helpful tips and an instructional video on how to access Reynolds Center Webinars.

ABOUT THE PROGRAM

This free Webinar is sponsored by the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism. If you have any questions about the Webinar or the center, please email Executive Director Linda Austin or call 602-496-9187.