Judy D. Olian, dean of UCLA Anderson School of Management also announced that John Huey, former editor-in-chief at Time Inc. will receive the 2013 Lifetime Achievement Award. Global enterprise editor at Reuters, Michael Williams, will be awarded the 2013 Lawrence Minard Editor Award.

Finalists in 14 competition categories were selected from more than 400 entries.

FULL LIST and press release about the finalists of the 2013 Gerald Loeb Awards for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism

Huey and Williams will receive their career achievement awards at the 2013 Gerald Loeb Awards dinner on Tuesday, June 25, 2013, at Capitale in New York City, where the Gerald Loeb Awards will celebrate 40 years with UCLA Anderson. 

The Gerald Loeb Awards were established in 1957 by the late Gerald Loeb, a founding partner of E.F. Hutton. His intention was to encourage reporting on business and finance that would inform and protect the private investor and the general public. For more information – Loeb Awards and dinner celebration.

2013 Loeb Award NOMINEES: 

Beat Reporting Category Finalists

• Erik Schatzker, Dawn Kopecki, Bradley Keoun, Stephanie Ruhle, Mary Childs, Christine Harper, Max Abelson and Rick Green for “Beached Whale: JPMorgan’s Huge Loss” – Bloomberg News
• Tom Bergin for “Corporate Taxation Series” – Reuters
• Tim Logan, Lisa Brown, Jeremy Kohler, Tim Bryant and Steve Giegerich for “Roberts Brothers” – St. Louis Post-Dispatch
• Scott Patterson, Jenny Strasburg, Chris Canipe, Mike Sudal and Sarah Slobin for “Dark Markets” – The Wall Street Journal
• Steven Mufson for “Shale Gas” – The Washington Post

Breaking News Category Finalists

• Elisabeth Behrmann, Brett Foley, Firat Kayakiran, Jesse Riseborough, Zachary R. Mider, Matthew Campbell, Simon Casey, Kevin Crowley and Jacqueline Simmons for “Glencore Xstrata: Deal of the Year” – Bloomberg News
• Jessica Silver-Greenberg, Peter Eavis, Nelson D. Schwartz, Andrew Ross Sorkin, Nathaniel Popper, Edward Wyatt, Ben Protess and Mark Scott for “London Whale” – The New York Times
• Alistair Barr, John McCrank, Rodrigo Campos, Olivia Oran, Nadia Damouni, Suzanne Barlyn and Ryan Vlastelica for “Facebook IPO Coverage” – Reuters
• Thomas Lee, David Phelps, Janet Moore, Paul McEnroe, Tony Kennedy, Patrick Kennedy and Eric Wieffering for “Best Buy CEO Resigns Under Cloud” – Star Tribune
• Anupreeta Das, Jenny Strasburg, Jacob Bunge, E.S. Browning, Telis Demos and Sharon Terlep for “Buying the Big Board” – The Wall Street Journal

Broadcast Category Finalists

• Sharyl Attkisson, Chris Licht, Rand Morrison, Sharon Hoffman, Gavin Boyle, Keith Summa, Kim Skeen, Pia Malbran, David Small and Nancy Wyatt for “The Business of Congress” – CBS News
• Joe Ducey, Lauren Gilger, Gerard Watson, Scott Sherman, Maria Tomasch and Aaron Wische for “Ford Escape: Exposing a Deadly Defect” – KNXV-TV
• Byron Harris, Billy Bryant, Jason Trahan and Mark Smith for “Denticaid: Medicaid Dental Abuse in Texas” – WFAA-TV
• Martin Smith, Michael Kirk, Marcela Gaviria, Mike Wiser, Jim Gilmore, Tom Jennings and Doug Hamilton for “Money, Power and Wall Street” – FRONTLINE

Commentary Category Finalists

• Brian McGrory for “It’s Greed to Top All” – The Boston Globe
• John Gapper for “John Gapper (Financial Times)” – Financial Times
• Michael Hiltzik for “Michael Hiltzik on Business” – Los Angeles Times
• Morgan Housel for “Morgan Housel: On the Economy” – The Motley Fool
• Ilan Moscovitz for “On Financial Reform” – The Motley Fool

Explanatory Category Finalists

• John Schmid, Mike De Sisti, Lou Saldivar, Emily Yount and Nick Lujero for “Paper Cuts” – Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
• Mike McGraw and Alan Bavley for “Beef’s Raw Edges” – The Kansas City Star
• Charles Duhigg, Keith Bradsher, David Barboza, David Kocieniewski, David Segal, Bill Vlasic and Hiroko Tabuchi for “The iEconomy” – The New York Times
• Thomas Frank and Christopher Schnaars for “Green Inc.” – USA Today
• Michael Kirk, Martin Smith, Marcela Gaviria, Mike Wiser, Jim Gilmore, Jason M. Breslow, Tom Jennings and Doug Hamilton for “Money, Power and Wall Street” – FRONTLINE

Images/Visuals Category Finalists

• Kenneth Cukier, Peter Winfield and Ben Thompson for “Live Charts” – The Economist
• Tom Giratikanon, Amanda Cox, Sergio Pecanha, Alicia Parlapiano, Jeremy White, Robert Gebeloff, Ford Fessenden, Archie Tse, Alan McLean, Shan Carter, Mike Bostock and Matthew Ericson for “Economy Interactives” – The New York Times
• Samuel Aranda, Mauricio Lima, Andrea Bruce and Adam Ferguson for “The Euro Crisis” – The New York Times

International Category Finalists

• Mehul Srivastava, Andrew MacAskill and Adi Narayan for “Mother India Starves Her Children” – Bloomberg News
• Michael Forsythe, Shai Oster, Natasha Khan, Dune Lawrence, Henry Sanderson, Chloe Whiteaker, Fan Wenxin, Michael Wei, Phil Kuntz and Ben Richardson for “Revolution to Riches” – Bloomberg News
• David Barboza and Sharon LaFraniere for “China’s Secret Fortunes” – The New York Times

Investigative Category Finalists

• Ames Alexander, Karen Garloch, Joseph Neff and David Raynor for “Prognosis: Profits” – The Charlotte Observer and The News & Observer
• Patricia Callahan, Sam Roe and Michael Hawthorne for “Playing With Fire” – Chicago Tribune
• David Barstow, Alejandra Xanic von Bertrab and Stephanie Clifford for “Wal-Mart Abroad” – The New York Times
• Ryan Knutson, Liz Day, Travis Fox, Habiba Nosheen and Martin Smith for “Cell Tower Deaths” – ProPublica and FRONTLINE
• Brian Grow, Anna Driver, Joshua Schneyer, Janet Roberts, Jeanine Prezioso, David Sheppard and John Shiffman for “Inside Chesapeake Energy” – Reuters

Magazines Category Finalists

• Drake Bennett for “Marriage at 30,000 Feet (United/Continental Merger)” – Bloomberg Businessweek
• David Evans for “Duping the Donors” – Bloomberg Markets
• Richard Behar for “Hess Oil’s Russian Mob Problem” – Forbes
• Francine McKenna for “Social Media’s Phony Accounting” and “Lying With Numbers” – Forbes
• Connie Bruck  for “Cashier du Cinema” – The New Yorker
• Robert Capps for “Why Things Fail” – Wired Magazine

News Services Category Finalists

• Jana Randow, Jeff Black, Gabi Thesing, Anchalee Worrachate, Simon Kennedy and James G. Neuger for “The Plan to Save the Euro” – Bloomberg News
• Tom Bergin for “Corporate Taxation Series” – Reuters
• Brian Grow, Anna Driver, Joshua Schneyer, Janet Roberts, Jeanine Prezioso, David Sheppard and John Shiffman for “Inside Chesapeake Energy” – Reuters

Newspapers – Large Category Finalists

• Patricia Callahan, Sam Roe and Michael Hawthorne for “Playing With Fire” – Chicago Tribune
• Charles Duhigg, Keith Bradsher, David Barboza, David Kocieniewski, David Segal, Bill Vlasic and Hiroko Tabuchi for “The iEconomy” – The New York Times
• David Barstow, Alejandra Xanic von Bertrab and Stephanie Clifford for “Wal-Mart Abroad” – The New York Times

Newspapers – Small & Medium Category Finalists

• Ames Alexander, Karen Garloch, Joseph Neff and David Raynor for “Prognosis: Profits” – The Charlotte Observer and The News & Observer
• Mandy Locke and David Raynor for “Ghost Workers” – The News & Observer
• Colin Woodard for “Virtual Schools in Maine: The Profit Motive You May Not Know About” – Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram
• Michael Sasso for “Gambling for Jobs” – The Tampa Tribune

Online Category Finalists

• Jim Morris, Chris Hamby and Ronnie Greene for “Hard Labor” – The Center for Public Integrity
• Matt Isaacs, Lowell Bergman and Stephen Engelberg for “Inside the Investigation of Leading Republican Money Man Sheldon Adelson” – Investigative Reporting Program at U.C. Berkeley, ProPublica and FRONTLINE
• John Schmid, Mike De Sisti, Lou Saldivar, Emily Yount and Nick Lujero for “Paper Cuts” – Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
• Alison Young and Peter Eisler for “Ghost Factories” – USA TODAY

Personal Finance Category Finalists

• Lisa Gibbs, Ismat Sarah Mangla, Penelope Wang and Gary Weiss for “High Cost of Saying Goodbye Series” – Money Magazine
• Andrew Martin, Andrew W. Lehren, Ron Lieber and Tamar Lewin for “Degrees of Debt” – The New York Times
• Natasha Singer for “You for Sale” – The New York Times
• Jason Zweig for “The Intelligent Investor” – The Wall Street Journal

Consider:

• It’s about competition, the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat.The same is true of business journalism. We write about competition: Companies vs. companies, cities and states vs. cities and states, people fighting to land a limited number of jobs. This is never dry stuff in the hands of a gifted sportswriter, and the same should be true of our stories. Who’s on top? Who’s falling? What are “the standings,” the “pennant race,” the “playoffs” the famous rivalries and where is the search for redemption on your business beat?

The press box can be fun. Photo: Jenn Vargas

• Personalities bring readers. Every sports town has its favorite or infamous players, coaches and owners. Sportswriters help us get to know these people as if they were friends, neighbors and even family members. It’s not just about games and stats, but the individual’s tics, fears, arrogance, past glories, potential, disgraces and great quotes. Translate that to your most important and eccentric CEOs, entrepreneurs, managers in the firing line, union bosses, up-and-comers and the same magnetism is yours for the taking.

• Inside baseball stories are actually interesting. If, that is, they are told by expert reporters, offering insider knowledge and new information about a game you already saw and thought you knew. Yes, they primarily appeal to baseball fans (or football, basketball, soccer, etc.), but this is a large and — importantly — fanatical audience. Writing about what’s going on inside your local employers has the same appeal.

• Expertise matters. The best sports sections have expert journalists on every beat, from preps to professional. When a city lands an expansion team, the newspaper typically recruits a major league-level journalist as the lead writer. He or she brings the skill and seasoning, knows the game in and out, is on first-name terms with the players and coaches. In business, this brings a level of sophistication that produces stories that nail the sport and game with authority, tell insiders things even they didn’t know and makes them so riveting that even people with little interest in that company or industry will be drawn in.

• Great writing matters. Sports Illustrated made its name not with the swimsuit issue but with some of the finest writing anywhere. Especially in its glory days, this drew in people who didn’t really care about sports. The great journalist A.J. Liebling covered wars, McCarthyism, politics, life in New York — but he was also a sportswriter, especially in his timeless essays on boxing. At its best, sportswriting tells stories of eternal human dreams, dilemmas, mysteries and allegories. We should be writing this way, too, because the messy business of making and spending money is one of the most compelling human stories (see Gatsby, The Great).

• Destinations and community. Sports sections offer columnists with strong voices, insights and opinions — love ‘em or hate ‘em, you’ve still got to read ‘em. It also offers a chance to create reader forums, Letters to the Sports Editor and hundreds of reader comments on stories. Business sections may never reach this level of fanatical reader interest, but we should try. We’re writing about (or should be) money, power, the chance to get ahead, the intersection of big money and its influence on government, huge corporations that influence our lives and society much more than nine ballplayers.

* Stats. Newspapers long ago did away with pages of stock listings — not a smart thing considering the many older readers who didn’t have Internet access or preferred to read them on dead trees. But the stats are some of the most read items in any sports section. It should be that way for business, too. Now, both in print and online, a host of business information can make for customized tables (and graphics).

 Don’t expect the same money or space. But sports still has much to teach us.

And for more about the sports and business, the Reynolds Center has a Beat Basics written by the Arizona Republic’s Craig Harris: Business of Sports, an introduction.

Kyung and Janet focus on H-1B visas that allow companies to temporarily hire foreign skilled workers. They use data for Microsoft in their story, but Kyung says the story can be localized. “It would require some digging, and a bit of spreadsheet analysis,” she says.

Kyung says to start with the Department of Labor’s Office of Foreign Labor Certification, which keeps a database of visa and green-card applications. The information can be sorted by employers or by state. For instance, this link shows national information such as number of applications and top 10 employers.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has specific company data; however, contacting Ron Hira, a professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology, who uses the data, might be quicker, Kyung says.

“I suspect most employers will not readily divulge the percentage of foreign workers on their payroll,” she says. “Microsoft did, but even it refuses to say how many visa workers it hires through contracting firms.”

Also, find and interview workers hired through the visa program, since there is a direct impact on them as well, she says.

How small is too small for small business news? Photo: Patti Gravel

Did I just write that? Oh, well. My Management Tourette Syndrome, suddenly blurting out the truth in meetings, was why I was repeatedly warned that I would never make admiral of the Cox, Hearst, Scripps-Howard, Gannett and Knight Ridder navies. So here I am.

Yet it is a truism that most stories about small business are read by the reporter, the small-business owner and, if one is lucky, a copy editor. Some newspapers — no names here — have refined this to merely doing a glance box or two to “showcase” a couple of businesses. The reasons are obvious. Such puff pieces won’t arouse angry calls from local moguls or bring complaints that the paper isn’t being “positive,” and thus is actually the cause of the continuing economic weakness. They also play into the American ideal of the “entrepreneur,” heroic and untainted by plutocracy, and somehow still within reach of all of us cubicle proles.

“The small-business beat
shouldn’t be confused with
coverage of innovation
and entrepreneurship.”

But this way lies irrelevancy for business news. It is an invitation for readers to bolt to the hockey scores, or sites that provide actual business news.

Even in good news organizations, the small-biz beat is often where rookies start. In reality, it’s one of the most challenging assignments in our profession. That is, if it’s done in a way that’s compelling, meaningful, authoritative, sophisticated — and cuts through all the noise on the Web. I’ve rarely seen it done well, even on a national level. Only the Wall Street Journal really does a consistently good job in covering small business.

For metropolitan and smaller newspapers, the first rule is to avoid some snares, as the Bible would say. Do not be taken in by small business. It deserves the same skepticism and due diligence as if you were covering Exxon. Indeed, it requires more, because public companies must disclose such material information as earnings, compensation of top executives, pending litigation, etc. Small businesses don’t have to. Also, don’t ever fall under an “entrepreneur’s” spell. You’re not her advocate, however likeable and charismatic she may appear. Also, be sure to ask plenty of questions and explain things to readers. Don’t be absorbed by the Jargon Borg. Finally, don’t try to mimic magazines such as Inc. It doesn’t work effectively on a local level, and those readers are already reading those magazines, not you.

News orgs should be wary of doing features on a single company, and even more cautious about writing on individuals with no record. It is devilishly difficult to check them out — each should be vetted through court, Dun & Bradstreet and police records, a costly, time-consuming and call-in-a-favor task. Yes, the “heroic entrepreneur” will lie to you. Welcome to our profession. And even if he’s not arrested under lurid circumstances two weeks after your story runs, the story will likely be a crime of dullness.

So what works?

First question people asked when Basile's Pizza opened in Hoboken, N.J., in 2011 was 'Is it New York-style?' Photo: Joe Beone

Issues is one place to set the target-acquisition radar. How will the Affordable Care Act affect businesses in your city? Do small-business owners even know? (Do get at the facts, not the political spin). Are these firms getting loans again or not? Start at the Fed data on lending and work your way down to the local level. How about small businesses fighting Amazon.com — and usually losing? We face a long-term unemployment crisis — how is their hiring doing? As same-sex marriage makes strides, are smaller companies changing the way they provide benefits to employees? (Another story is how relatively few small businesses provide decent benefits).

Taxes, regulations, trade and lawsuits are all ways to write about small business in a relevant, timely and compelling way. The dramatic changes in the economy have altered small business — tell that story at both the 30,000-foot and fine-grain level. Government austerity and big company cutbacks affect thousands of small vendors — the only way small businesses are such big employers, or once were, is because of their connection with those big customers.

Another useful entry point is to look at smaller businesses that are local touchstones. Your town may also have a famous small-business owner or two. People know them and (usually) love them. How and what they are doing is often newsworthy. This may seem brutally unfair to the nobody businesses or individuals wanting to get “publicity,” but it will get more readers.

When I was business editor at the Cincinnati Enquirer, reporter Meghan Glynn connected with three young women who were starting a pizza restaurant. They agreed to let her follow them for a year as they tried to make it, and write the story however it was turning out. They also allowed her to see the books. The result was a great tale, updated periodically, with interesting people, a cool locale, ups and downs, and real stakes — nobody knew how it would turn out. The story put the business in context with startups in general and the economic situation in the city, leavened with portraits of the likeable owners who nevertheless went through serious trials (and did succeed).

Always be on the lookout for new news that will reach the widest readership.

The small-business beat shouldn’t be confused with coverage of innovation and entrepreneurship. Both are buzzwords. To cover the reality with authority means, for example, looking at gold-standard benchmarks for technology breakthroughs and capital — angel, growth and venture. Relatively few metro areas are really playing in this league.

Finally, remember that if a “small-business reader” exists, he or she wants useful intelligence, just like all business readers. But, as I can’t stop believing, business stories should be the most important local news in the paper. So deploy resources and pick coverage accordingly.

Before facing questions from a crowd of more than 30,000, billionaire investor Warren Buffett got a rock star’s treatment Saturday when he was mobbed by fans at Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting. (USA Today)

Warren Buffett at the Berkshire Hathaway-owned Borsheim Fine Jewelry. Photo: Alyssa Schukar/The World-Herald

When it comes to making a splash without making news, it’s hard to beat Warren E. Buffett.

Every spring, Buffett, chairman and chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., presides over a capitalist love fest in Omaha, Neb., that is much more than the company’s annual meeting. Whether it is “news” is open to debate. “There was no big news at Berkshire Hathaway Inc.’s annual meeting this past weekend,” Jason Zweig wrote to begin his column in the Wall Street Journal. If so, Zweig might have stopped right there.

Newspapers especially love Buffett and his meeting, not necessarily because he’s been buying newspapers and is upbeat about their future,* but rather because he gives us live business copy on a weekend. Wire editors rejoice at the prospect, as do copy editors, who get to write “Oracle of Omaha”** headlines.

No power will keep us from writing about Buffett. He’s regarded as, among other things, a plain-speaking man of the people. That’s a neat trick for the second-richest man in America, whose company has never paid a dividend and whose Class A stock sells for $165,000 a share. Berkshire Hathaway’s Class A stock has never split because, Buffett says, he likes investors who are in for the long haul. The company’s Class B shares — the creation of which Buffett allowed only reluctantly — are more affordable and have split. That put them in Standard and Poor’s 500-stock index, which for the first time gave Berkshire Hathaway direct influence over the stock market’s fortunes.

When handling stories about the Woodstock for Capitalists, bear in mind that what Buffett says at them is carefully planned to put the wizard in the best possible light. Edit accordingly. You can start by ditching “Woodstock for Capitalists.”

*Berkshire Vice Chairman Charlie Munger pointed out that Buffett made an exception to his usual investing habits for newspapers because he likes them. (Associated Press)

**Various sources, including Wikipedia, note that Buffett is known as the “Oracle of Omaha,” and also the “Sage of Omaha” and, relatively rarely, the “Wizard of Omaha.” (I am allowed to look at Wikipedia only because I am a highly trained professional. Before trying it yourself, be certain of your credentials. Material from Wikipedia may be used only when it relates to Wikipedia itself.)

—-

Inside the boardroom: The party is over!

‘Dr. Copper’ Tells Markets the Party’s Over: Albert Edwards

Fund Strategy Investment Committee: The end of the commodity party?

Whatever else may be going on in the markets, it ain’t no “party.” Take the usual steps when considering a “party’s over” headline: contemplate and reject.

—

This webinar is for journalists on all media platforms. Photo by Flickr user dmjarvey.

The free, two-day webinar, “Getting the Goods – Interviews that Work,” was held May 8-9, 2013.

Pulitzer Prize winner Jacqui Banaszynski explores the core purposes, techniques and ethics of the interview process. She reveals different interview approaches that work best in different situations and that apply to any genre of journalism.

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN

SESSION 1: Interviewing for article; getting access and getting the goods
SESSION 2: Interviewing for story; creating storytelling partners

SELF-GUIDED LESSON
At your own pace, review the session materials below to strengthen your storytelling with excellent interviewing skills.

Session recording

• Session 1: Strategies, Sourcing and Getting the Goods
• Session 2: Interviewing for the Story

PowerPoint presentations

• Getting the Goods — Session 1
• Getting the Goods — Session 2

Additional resources

• Interviewing Tips and Resources
• The Interview Arc: Interviewing with Courage and Creativity
• Interviewing Tips and Techniques by Jacqui Banaszynski
• Isabel Wilkerson on Interviewing
• Interview Strategies from John Sawatsky
• Ken Metzler on Creative Questions
• Interviewing Tips and Techniques by Jacqui Banaszynski

MORE ABOUT YOUR INSTRUCTOR

Pulitzer Prize winner Jacqui Banaszynski is the Knight Chair in Editing at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. She worked as a projects editor at The Oregonian in Portland and at the St. Paul Pioneer Press in Minnesota. She spent 18 years as a beat reporter and take-out writer at newspapers in the Northwest and the Midwest. While at the Pioneer Press, her series “AIDS in the Heartland” – an intimate look at the life and death of a gay farm couple – won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize in feature writing and a national Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists.

She has written from Kurdistan and Antarctica, and has made Page One with dog obituaries and criminal investigations. She has edited several award-winning projects, including the work of The Oregonian’s Tom Hallman Jr., which won the 1997 ASNE Best Writing Award. Banaszynski, a native of a Wisconsin farm village, is a 1974 graduate of Marquette University.

She has taught journalism at the Poynter Institute, the National Writers Workshops, APME NewsTrain, the University of Kansas and the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul. Banaszynski has served four times as a juror for the Pulitzer Prizes.

A map turtle released in Wilder Creek. Photo by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Midwest Region

Elizabeth McGowan, Lisa Song and David Hasemyer won a Pulitzer Prize this year for their InsideClimate News series “The Dilbit Disaster: Inside the Biggest Oil Spill You’ve Never Heard Of,” which looked the impact of a diluted bitumen or “dilbit” spill in Michigan.

Elizabeth says she discovered the spill while looking at energy and environmental concerns as an election issue. She realized the spill in the Gulf had overshadowed the one in Michigan. “The local papers had covered it, but it was not on the radar screen of anybody else,” she says.

Many months later, the three-part series and epilogue as well as an e-book launched on the InsideClimate News site. (A follow-up version of the e-book is now on Amazon.) Reporter Lisa Song, who did the scientific research for the series, described it as a “suspenseful tale like a crime thriller” when I spoke with her for a previous post.

That’s partly because Elizabeth and her editors chose cinematography as the writing style early on, Elizabeth says. “It’s important what you put in and what you leave out,” she says. “If you do a notebook dump, readers will be lost.”

That style is apparent from the beginning. Elizabeth says she met the lead character John LaForge when she traveled to Marshall, Mich., in November 2011. She starts the series with him noticing an “acrid stench” as he left his home. When he returns later, she writes:

“LaForge said he was stooped over the creek, looking for the source of the gunk, when two men in a white truck marked Enbridge pulled up just before 10 a.m. One rushed to LaForge’s open front door and disappeared inside with an air-monitoring instrument.

The man emerged less than a minute later, and uttered the words that still haunt LaForge today: It’s not safe to be here. You’re going to have to leave your house. Now.”

Elizabeth says she and editor Susan White worked closely from the first draft to add the “little bones, flesh and skin” to the skeleton outline, she says. “In telling a story, it helps to have more than one set of eyes,” Elizabeth says. “The writing was back and forth, line by line. We had to keep the reader coming along.”

Elizabeth McGowan

Elizabeth organized her notes by sources, she says. Separating by source allowed her to easily find notes from neighbors, Enbridge officials and others as she worked through the story, she says.

Elizabeth does not have a feature writing background like many reporters who write long narratives. But, she says, “It’s something my brain seems to be able to do.”

She’s using lessons learned from writing the Dilbit series to write a book about a cross-country bike ride and cancer survivor, she says. She left InsideClimate News last year to write the book.

She was working on the book when an Associated Press reporter called to interview her about winning the Pulitzer Prize, she says. It was her birthday and she hadn’t heard the news. “I said, ‘You’re making that up!’” Then she called a friend who confirmed the win. “It still feels unreal.”

The reporters and editors had to “steal time” to get the project done because of the organization’s small staff. Elizabeth kept going because there was something wrong, she says. She also had sources like LaForge who – despite her warning that she would call often, talked to her because they wanted to help others.

“We didn’t do this because we thought we needed to win an award,” she says. “We did the series because it’s egregious and there are too many situations like this.”

Alicia Wallace used unique details from documents to determine a Walmart Neighborhood Market was coming to her coverage area.

Not all retailers are keen on tossing together a flashy press release to announce a store’s arrival. Many prefer to fly under the radar due to a variety of reasons – from ongoing lease negotiations to competitive concerns.

But that doesn’t necessarily mean a dead end for reporters. Although all the information might not be out in the open yet, there are some unique avenues that can help journalists identify mystery retailers.

In an article I wrote late last year, “Walmart buzz grows around mystery grocer opening at Boulder’s Diagonal Plaza,” items such as paints, shelving and renderings of a cart corral were significant clues that Walmart – which had tried and failed many times to enter a Boulder market that was not receptive to the retailer’s presence — was behind a mystery grocery store under development.

Walmart’s potential arrival had significant impact on the city’s sales tax base and competitive landscape. It also raised concerns from citizens and municipal leaders, who claimed the retailer was trying to sneak into Boulder.

Below are some tips and hints that could be applicable in efforts to track down an unknown new business and to overcome obstacles that may land in your path:

Start at the store itself. Pay attention to any ongoing activity, types of materials being used in construction and any signs or posting that may lend some clues. Chat up a worker or a neighboring business owner.

Track down the property owner. This information can be accessed via the county’s assessor’s office. If the owner of the building is an LLC, that information can be plugged into respective secretary of state business search portals.

The secretary of state’s search actually came quite in handy for me on a previous article that Trader Joe’s planned to open its first store in Colorado.

Query your city’s licensing office. This helps confirm if certain companies have filed for applications for sales tax, business or liquor licenses.

Search the state regulatory listings. In Colorado, each pharmacist and pharmacy operation had to be registered separately.

Contact the city’s planning and development office. If activity is ongoing, then a building permit most likely was filed. Seek out planning and development documents for the respective property.

These documents typically have some identifying information about the tenant or the planned use. In the case of mystery grocery in Boulder’s Diagonal Plaza, these plans were absent of the retailer’s name.

The building permits and related documents could have a wealth of information even if it’s not the most obvious.

Make note of details that could be significant. Be careful to transcribe specific details exactly as they were worded in the plans. For the article on Walmart, these details included a store number, listing of the departments, the number of checkouts and a general feel for the layout. The mystery grocer’s fixture plan contained vast amounts of “wall mounted wire shelving 18×48 inches” and departments had items such as a check writing desk, RedBox, Rug Doctor and a Money Center Express.

If a paint scheme is listed, write down several of the paints, including those with unique names.

The Diagonal Plaza tenant’s documents did have a store number of “#3096,” which gave me the indication that it was part of a larger chain.

Something to keep in mind: You should have little problem in viewing electronic or hard copies of these planning documents. If you run against issues from the city and officials are denying your requests, ask them to provide the regulatory statute or code that they claim would prohibit this viewing. File an open records request or consult with your publication’s legal team.

The internet can be your friend. In the wire shelving example, I started out with a simple search of “18×48” and then expanded it to include “ ‘wall mounted wire shelving’ ‘18×48’ ” and then searched the names of various retailers.

Wallace is a reporter at the Daily Camera in Colorado.

I used the same process for the paints and store number.

Try to leave no stone unturned. After not receiving responses from the property owner and Walmart, I contacted other grocers to inquire whether they planned to open a store at Diagonal Plaza. The majority of them did not lay claim to the store.

Don’t let context slip away. Secondary sources such as a city finance official or a retail analyst can provide perspective on the effects of a retailer’s arrival and also provide some clues to further identify a mystery tenant.

Search the company’s “careers” page to see if hiring is taking place in your city.

Sign up for job notification alerts for specific companies. After we were given a heads up that Walmart had made a job posting on Monster for a Boulder hire, I tracked down additional postings and wrote an article. That same day, Walmart announced it was opening a Neighborhood Market at Diagonal Plaza.

As with any document or internet search, be very cautious about the validity of the information and how you convey that in the article.

We felt that the wide variety of elements I obtained through online and in-person reporting were substantial enough to lay out in an article as several different pieces aligned with Walmart as opposed to other retailers.

Don’t give up. Continue to pursue the story and go through the checks again to see if new documents have been filed or new information is available. (And don’t miss the video below where I walk through the key details that helped me uncover the Walmart story.)

Lisa Song

From Lisa, I learned you don’t always have to leave the newsroom to find an expert. She has degrees in environmental science and science writing from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She says her background allowed her to comprehend what sources said without too much explanation. Because she understood the information, she was able to ask important follow up questions, she says.

Her primary task in the project was determining the technical aspects of the oil that caused it to sink into the water instead of lying on top like most oils, she says. With no specific research available, Lisa had to do her own. “I couldn’t get at the question directly,” she says. She searched for articles, interviewed scientists, and dug through government records, she says.

The reporters needed information about the oil to show how the Michigan spill differed from others, including the Gulf of Mexico spill that also happened in 2010. They found most procedures and equipment focus on floating oil. “Because the Marshall accident was the first major spill of dilbit in U.S. waters, cleanup experts at the scene were unprepared for the challenge of submerged oil,” one story says.

Lisa also had to crunch numbers from a database of pipeline spills. (You can read more about that process in this Investigative Reporters and Editors post.)

One of her most daunting tasks was reviewing about 10,000 pages of a National Transportation Safety Board investigation. “I was able to go through the documents to pull out key facts,” she says. “It helped strengthen the story and fact check information from the Congressional Record.”

As part of a joint project “America’s Big Beef” with The Kansas City Star, Peggy Lowe of Harvest Public Media and KCUR in Kansas City found a connection between university research and corporate donations. Her lead sums the story nicely:

“Agricultural colleges in the top five beef-producing states have become quasi-arms of the cattle industry, selling science to corporate bidders who set the research agenda with their dollars.”

I contacted Peggy because she was among this year’s winners of the Radio Television Digital News Association’s Edward R. Murrow Awards. I also reached out to get tips on gathering financial details about colleges and universities.

“It’s a rich, fertile soil for business reporters or higher education reporters,” Peggy says. “It’s really insidious the way money comes into these schools and flows out in research dollars.”

Some schools don’t hesitate to divulge information. Many even distribute press releases touting the donations, Peggy says. But getting donation information from other public schools takes more than filing public records requests.

One hurdle that surprised me was the separation of financial information for colleges within colleges. For instance, an agriculture school could have separate Animal Health or Crop Science schools within it, Peggy says. Tracking this can be difficult so carefully phrase public records requests, she says.

Reviewing alumni groups, boards of regents and naming rights can indicate who’s giving money, she says. Commodity boards or interest groups such as the American Farm Bureau also can provide clues or information, she says. She warns some schools receive money through private foundations or other private entities, which removes the donations from the purview of public records requests.

For those of you looking to get around hefty charges for information, Peggy says to ask for a cost breakdown. One school wanted to charge $5,000 to fulfill a records request, but once she asked for the cost details (and did some negotiating), the cost dropped to $138, she says.