Retail

Help readers make sense of food recalls

By Melissa Preddy on Mar 09, 2010 in Beats, Economy, Featured, Health care, Investigation, Personal finance, Private companies, Retail, Story ideas

You think Toyotas with rogue throttles are scary?
Try Pringles with salmonella.
Over the past few days news of another possibly widespread food recall has broken, and your readers will be wondering how it affects them. While you’re at it, you might want to develop a broader piece on food inspection, retail and restaurant inspection and other [...]

Shoot for a March Madness marketing package

By Melissa Preddy on Mar 08, 2010 in Beats, Featured, Retail, Sports, Story ideas

I barely know a basketball hoop from a goal post but even for the athletically clueless, it’s a given that March Madness is one of the year’s peaks for sports marketing, consumerism and office betting pools.
With Selection Sunday less than a week away, you’ll want to plan at least a couple of features between now [...]

Go beyond the Oscars for your own movie feature

By Melissa Preddy on Mar 03, 2010 in Beats, Economy, Featured, Retail, Story ideas

With the countdown to Sunday’s presentation of the 82nd Academy Awards underway, now might be a good time to produce a blockbuster feature yourself, focusing on new developments affecting local movie theaters and related industries.
It’s a fun, kind of glamorous story that will give you a welcome break from chronicling unemployment, bank failures and plunging [...]

Chile’s earthquake: tallying the economic toll in your town

By Melissa Preddy on Feb 28, 2010 in Beats, Economy, Featured, Retail, Story ideas

The tragic earthquake in Chile may be a hemisphere away, but the economic ripples still could reach your backyard.
With casualty reports still coming in and a recovery effort under way, the less urgent ramifications of the temblor won’t be assessed for a while. But business journalists may want to delve around for local impact.
Chile’s coastal [...]

Avoiding the earnings trap with the story behind the numbers at TJX Cos.

By Rosland Gammon on Feb 25, 2010 in Basics, Best Practices, Featured, Retail

Elizabeth Holmes of The Wall Street Journal chose expansion news as the focus of her TJX Cos. earnings story:
“Consumers may still be keeping a tight grip on their cash, but that’s prompting discount retailer TJX Cos. to pull out its wallet.
A major beneficiary of the bargain hunting forced by the deep recession, TJX is accelerating [...]

Cash for appliances tip of the green money iceberg

By Melissa Preddy on Feb 24, 2010 in Beats, Economy, Featured, Green Economy 2010, Green Economy 2010 blog, Personal finance, Retail, Story ideas, Technology

Lots of good consumer stories on tap these days as the appliance equivalent of ‘cash for clunkers’ is under way or about to be in dozens of states.
Read about the bones of the program – funded by stimulus dollars — at the U.S. Department of Energy’s site. Each state’s effort is different in terms of [...]

Finding stories inside drugstores and urgent care clinics

By Melissa Preddy on Feb 18, 2010 in Beats, Featured, Health care, Non-profits, Personal finance, Retail

It’s shaping up as a busy little week for merger and take-over bids in the retail industry. Following Simon Properties’ bid for rival mall-operator General Growth, we got word on Wednesday that Walgreen Co. wants to acquire New York’s Duane Reade pharmacy business.
Drugstore chains – especially the one-on-every-corner variety – may not seem like sexy [...]

Spin stories from Simon Property’s bid for General Growth Properties

By Melissa Preddy on Feb 16, 2010 in Beats, Economy, Featured, Retail, Story ideas

Shopping centers are always handy for journalists as a one-stop shopping for a plethora of business and financial stories. And with a large takeover bid putting malls into the spotlight this week, it might be a good time to see how your local centers fare.
Simon Property Group Inc. is making headlines with its $10 billion [...]

Last push for ‘no payments, same as cash’ deals

By Melissa Preddy on Feb 15, 2010 in Beats, Economy, Personal finance, Retail, Story ideas, TrendingTopic

Coinciding with the implementation date of the new CARD rules is a deadline for retailers to start complying with federal regulations that cover installment-loan purchases.
You know, those popular “no payments, no interest” for 12, 24 or 36 month deals on furniture, appliances, and electronics. (The catch, for purchasers, has always been to pay off the [...]