It’s called insurance, but this beat is really about people and the bad things that they hope won’t happen. Paige St. John, from the Sarasota (Fla.) Herald-Tribune, explains ways to approach the beat with extra skepticism and very good sources.
It’ll be a while yet before the true toll of the past days’ destructive tornados in Oklahoma is known but you may be wondering about how to tackle the business and financial angles of a disaster. I can’t provide as many links as usual to stories you may want to emulate, because they haven’t been written [...]
It’s hard to overlook the buzz created by this week’s revelation by actor and activist Angelina Jolie that she had preemptive surgery to remove both breasts, because she carries a gene that makes cancer likely. News of Jolie’s decision, which she wrote about in a first-person New York Times essay on Tuesday, has generated a great [...]
Catchy story ideas are piling up so rapidly this week I’m afraid some good news pegs will get lost on the cutting-room floor, so without further ado here’s a new addition of Quicktips: Baring biceps: The American Society of Plastic Surgeons is just out with its annual report on in-demand cosmetic procedures. The 2012 Plastic [...]
With vivid images of the Texas fertilizer plant explosion still making headlines, you may be thinking about a workplace safety angle to the companies you cover. It’s a natural story to localize, as audiences ponder the relative perils they face on the job. From inspection records to prevalence of workers compensation claims to fatalities to [...]
With 2014 less than nine months away, not to mention the nation’s expanding medical problems driven by demographics and lifestyle, the health care beat will always be fertile territory for the business journalist. In addition to the story ideas related to the implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care act outlined in this recent blog [...]
You may already have seen the intriguing NPR report on Social Security disability claims, “Unfit for Work: The startling rise of disability claims in America.” The report details the surge in claims to the Social Security disability program over the past several decades, attributing it to an aging workforce that, in many cases, is displaced [...]
Amid the doom and gloom of sequestration, a pending jobs report that likely will be tepid at best and more foreclosure scams, it’s nice to get something warm and cuddly in the business pages for an occasional change. And since we’re in the midst of the national Professional Pet Sitters Week, slated for March 3-9 [...]
As the most telegenic first-world problem in years continues to play out in the saga of the powerless Carnival Triumph and its hungry, mostly incommunicado and sewage-dodging thousands of passengers, you may be looking for more business angles to the story. Since power knocked out the ship’s power off Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, discomforts have escalated and [...]
Mother Nature is having her way with the economy again, but this time via a microscopic virus rather than a gargantuan storm, earthquake or tidal wave. Ominous headlines about the magnitude of this year’s flu season are spilling onto business pages, and you might want to take a run at several financial angles to influenza [...]
