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.”

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.

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.

RIM CEO Jim Balsillie was excited about the not-so-popular Blackberry PlayBook during a 2011 earnings call.

With the advent of earnings season, when dozens of such calls are taking place each day, it’s a good time to reflect on the value of this business communication ritual for business journalists.

And “ritual” is the correct word for “the quarterly earnings conference call.” These events have an eerie sameness if you listen to enough of them. Despite their best efforts to sound conversational, executives often come across as stilted or nervous as they read their carefully prepared scripts. Some even have scripts for anticipated questions and have gone through rehearsals with other staff posing as pesky analysts. Investor relations professionals view earnings calls as one of the critical events of their year, so they leave little to chance. (On the website “Inside Investor Relations,” one article details “30 tips for better conference calls,” including “avoid excessive exuberance.”)

The primary audience for an earnings call are the analysts who follow the company for investment banks and institutional investors; these folks are invited not only to listen to the call but also to ask questions at the end of the presentation. A moderator calls on the speakers one by one, so the exchange is far from free-wheeling. But an earnings call can still be mildly revelatory and, thanks to a regulation adopted by the SEC in 2000, anyone else can listen in, including small investors, competitors and journalists.

Regulation Fair Disclosure, or Reg FD, arose to ensure that everyone is able to receive material information about a company at the same time. Prior to its existence, companies might disclose important information selectively in private sessions with analysts or big investors, a practice that put smaller investors at a disadvantage.

If you are a journalist following a particular company, listening in on a conference call should be part of your regular beat responsibilities, just like monitoring SEC filings and insider stock trades. Sure, it’s unlikely that anything unexpected will happen, but you never know.

Perhaps the most infamous – and newsworthy – earnings conference call in history took place in the spring of 2001, when Jeffrey Skilling, then CEO of Enron, responded to a question from a persistent analyst with the epithet, “We appreciate it…a–hole.” Several years later, Al Lord, CEO of Sallie Mae, may have topped Skilling’s gaffe when he ended a conference call by muttering “Let’s get the – out of here.”

Although you are unlikely to hear something as colorful as an offhand expletive, the calls still have value for several reasons:

• You can learn what the company believes are most salient about its filings and develop some context about its strategies.
• You can get beyond the obvious in a quarterly earnings story and provide readers something of value that they are unlikely to seek out on their own.
• You can eavesdrop on concerns informed investors and analysts have about the company during the Q&A session.
• You can hear directly from top executives and quote them in your stories, even if these are people who will never return your call. Simply attribute the comment by saying something like, “the remark was made during the company’s fourth quarter conference call Tuesday.”
• If the executive is someone you plan to interview in the future, you can get a feel for his or her personality, even in a carefully scripted event.

Some executives take pains to be conversational and even jovial. Others are combative and prickly. Referring to a comment made in a conference call when you have that interview can be a good reporting habit. It conveys to the executive that you’ve done your homework.

Yahoo!'s Cutline column liveblogged News Corps' earnings call in August 2011. Photo: Yahoo!

The vast majority of publicly traded companies have conference calls. It’s easy to find out when they are scheduled by looking at a company’s website, usually under a tab labeled “investor relations.” Some make the time and date available a month or more in advance. Others wait until closer to the call. Many financial sites compile a calendar of upcoming calls, including Yahoo Finance, Marketwatch, Reuters, Seeking Alpha, Earningswhispers.com and Earnings.com.

To listen to a call real time, you often have to complete an online registration in advance via the company’s website. Then you just dial in at the appointed hour and listen. Some companies use technology that allows listeners to view charts and graphs on their computer screens as the call is taking place.

A call usually opens with a moderator or coordinator reading a disclaimer about “forward-looking statements.” Then the CEO typically has a few opening words about the quarter just ended and turns the microphone over to the chief financial officer.

Depending on the news and the company, other executives might be given a chance to elaborate on a particular development or strategy. Finally, the moderator will open the call to questions.

If you miss a company’s live call, don’t despair. A recording is usually archived for a month or so on the company’s website and at financial websites. Some archived recordings conveniently allow you to jump ahead in the call rather than listen to it linearly. Another time-saver is transcripts, many of which can be obtained free from seekingalpha.com; other services offer transcripts for a fee.

Be sure to check the provider’s linking or quotation policy before including information from a transcript in your reporting. And it’s a good practice to double check a quote in a transcript against the original recording, if that is still available. Like the conference call itself, the transcript probably comes with a disclaimer.

Pam Luecke was the initial Reynolds Endowed Chair in Business Journalism; her success at Washington and Lee University paving the way for the naming of subsequent business journalism chairs.

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.

Day 1 of Britt Johnsen and Kirsti Marohn's project was 'So many lots, so few houses.'

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 found their three-county area had 12,000 empty lots.

Those lots left some homeowners in stark areas watching their home values fall.

In part one of the series, they write that homeowners weren’t the only victims:

“Minnesota developers, builders and investors have lost thousands or even millions on a gamble that the housing market would keep growing. Some have gone bankrupt or owe thousands in taxes and assessments.

Elected officials and other government leaders made the same gamble. In many cases, cities bore the cost of expanding and improving roads, sewer and water lines, treatment plants and schools, all based on growth projections that didn’t materialize.

Those developments haven’t generated the property tax revenue, assessment payments and user fees city officials expected. In some cases, stalled developments have burdened cities with millions of dollars of debt.”

Both Kirsti and Britt, who’s no longer at the paper, offered some great tips on how they gathered data that didn’t exist in some of the cities they covered.

Today’s Tip: Start by determining the number of subdivisions in your area.

Britt says the story idea came from a real estate source who said there was a 10-year supply of vacant lots.

“That struck us as pretty interesting,” Britt says. “We wanted to know more about our area’s vacant lots, which were a symbol of the housing market crash, unfulfilled promises and economic hardship that touched just about everyone the last few years.”

However, when they started reporting, officials and real estate agents said the vacant lots weren’t a big deal and it was “only a matter of time” until the market turned around, Kirsti says.

“We had to keep asking the right questions and figure out what data we needed to show what was really happening,” Kirsti says.

Getting the total number of lots took time. They had to request a list of all platted subdivisions with 10 or more vacant lots, as well as the total number of lots in each one, the name of the development company and the amount of special assessments owed, Kirsti says. They created a database using Microsoft Excel to track and map 60 developments.

“Kirsti’s successful data requests were absolutely key in showing the vacancy rates, which were the basis for our story,” Britt says.

This Oshkosh military vehicle in Afghanistan is battle ready.

After years of covering a beat, earnings stories can lose their appeal for some reporters. Many reporters fall into a “plug and play” role. But that’s not what Scott Malone of Reuters did in his piece about Oshkosh Corp. Here the numbers aren’t as important as company investor Carl Icahn’s influence. He writes:

“Icahn, who owns 10 percent of the maker of military vehicles, said Oshkosh management does not do enough to boost shareholder returns. The company promises to provide investors with clearer benchmarks to measure its performance.

‘We heard the message that shareholders would like us to provide more targets to measure our progress,’ Chief Financial Officer David Sagehorn said on a conference call after the company reported better-than-expected first-quarter results. ‘As we go through our fiscal 2012, we will work on ways to provide targets.’”

Scott shared four tips for helping reporters get out of the rut.

Tip 1: Ask, “What’s the real story here?”

“Take a step back and ask yourself if the best story is really in the numbers,” Scott says. “Sometimes it is – if a company falls dramatically short of Wall Street’s expectations, readers will want to know why. But often there’s another story to be told that’s more compelling.”

Tip 2: Listen closely to quarterly conference calls to see if company executives go “off script.”

Do your homework ahead of time to know what the talking points will be so you’ll know if they’re offering new information. “Those small breaks can signal significant changes,” Scott says.

Tip 3:  Boil it down.

Scott says if the numbers are the story, don’t bog readers down trying to report on everything. Instead, focus on one or two numbers then use quotes and anecdotes to explain the rest. “You can convey as much information, and more importantly give the reader a frame to understand them in, that way.”

Tip 4: Go beyond what readers can get elsewhere.

Investors can easily access earnings reports and conference calls online. Therefore you need to “to offer exclusive information or insights, so they have a reason to choose to read your story,” Scott says.

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.

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.

A total of 1,030 entries will be considered for awards, bettering last year’s record entry total of 904, according to a press release from SABEW.

“We’re very gratified by this year’s unprecedented level of interest,” said SABEW’s president, Kevin Noblet, a managing editor at Dow Jones Newswires. “It clearly reflects the growing importance of financial and economic news, both to the public and inside the organizations that produce it.”

Winners will be announced later this month, with the awards presented Saturday, March 17, at SABEW’s 49th annual conference in Indianapolis. The conference will be at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis. A tentative schedule for the Indianapolis event is on the SABEW site.