Welcome to the business beat. If you are new to business reporting – relax. Mark W. Tatge, an author, professor and investigative reporter who spent three decades as a journalist, is here to walk you through the basics.
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, [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
By Pam Luecke Nearly every day, in board rooms all over America, executives and their investor relations staff huddle around a speaker phone and put their best collective face on the financial figures they have just filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. With the advent of earnings season, when dozens of such calls are [...]
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, [...]
Punxatawney Phil’s ‘six more weeks of winter’ prognostication lacked a certain punch this year, given the mild winter weather enjoyed in much of the lower 48 so far. If this is winter, bring it on, many residents are thinking. As I donned a light spring jacket to run some Saturday errands and bustled out to [...]
Now that one major TV-watching spectacle is over for 2012 – the Super Bowl – there’s only a week left until armchair experts will settle in front of the tube to call out critiques and accolades as they root for their favorite contenders in the Westminster Kennel Club’s annual dog show at New York’s Madison [...]
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 [...]
Bankrupt American Airlines on Wednesday revealed a tough restructuring plan that would scrap the pension plan, reduce health care benefits and, as several of my mobile news smartphone apps trumpted, , lay off some 13,000 employees. That’s a blow to a stumbling jobs market and a hit to consumer and worker confidence, though investors probably love [...]
