Story ideas

Quirky local indicators and other fun biz angles

By Melissa Preddy on Mar 18, 2010 in Beats, Economy, Featured, Personal finance, Private companies, Story ideas

Miscellaneous is probably my favorite among the 600,000-plus words in our English language. Like potpourri, salmagundi, hodgepodge, pastiche and its others sisters, it conjures up pleasant notions of variety, spontaneity and surprise.
That’s what you’re getting today: A veritable gallimaufry and mélange of topics that don’t quite merit their own posts but nevertheless will make for [...]

Daily story idea chat

By Robin J Phillips on Mar 17, 2010 in Daily story chat, Daily story idea chat, Featured, Story ideas

With our newly designed Web site, we’re trying some new things.
On this page, we’d like to kick off a discussion about the business story of the day, offer a place to share resources, tips, ideas.
One of us will kick things off, trying to identify what national stories you may be localizing or point out trends [...]

Humanizing health care reform in your region

By Melissa Preddy on Mar 17, 2010 in Beats, Economy, Featured, Health care, Non-profits, Personal finance, Story ideas

Health care reform limped back to center stage this week. And though the final outcome is as yet uncertain, one thing is for sure: Your readers will be wondering about how various scenarios will affect them.
That includes small businesspersons and corporate chiefs as well as individuals, so you have plenty of story angles from which [...]

Philly Inquirer maps data, finds higher unemployment in affluent areas

By Rosland Gammon on Mar 16, 2010 in Best Practices, Economy, Featured, Story ideas

Business writer Jane M. Von Bergen of The Philadelphia Inquirer writes about unemployment among those in the area’s wealthier ZIP codes. The story started with counts of continuing-unemployment claims in July 2007 and July 2009 by ZIP code in the Philadelphia area, gathered from the Pennsylvania and New Jersey departments of labor.
Today’s Tip: Map data first to see [...]

Help readers run with the bulls

By Melissa Preddy on Mar 15, 2010 in Beats, Economy, Featured, Personal finance, Story ideas

With U.S. stock markets continuing to creep upward, pundits are trotting out bullish forecasts and recommendations, such as this one from MarketWatch.
A lot of the buying is being driven by some better-than-expected fourth-quarter corporate profits and upbeat 2010 outlooks by companies ranging from Target to John Deere. We know how fast all of that can [...]

Tips on making the last-minute, tax-filing story fresh

By Melissa Preddy on Mar 12, 2010 in Beats, Economy, Featured, Personal finance, Story ideas

As of Monday, March 15, readers have exactly one month to get their 2009 income tax returns filed.

Or at least, they have one month to file an extension request,which is automatically granted and buys them another six months to finally get that financial file organized. (Just remember to remind your audience that they still are required [...]

Give readers a mortgage program scorecard

By Melissa Preddy on Mar 11, 2010 in Beats, Economy, Featured, Personal finance, Story ideas

Tax credits. Loan modifications. Deed-for-lease. Short-sale incentives.
It’s getting difficult to keep track of government programs aimed at propping up the frail home buying and selling markets.
And we’re paid to do so. Imagine the confusion among shoppers and sellers facing foreclosure or ready to dip a toe into spring’s residential real estate season.
My suggestion: a graphics-driven [...]

Daylight savings time has fiscal pros and cons

By Melissa Preddy on Mar 10, 2010 in Beats, Economy, Featured, Story ideas

Hard to believe that most of us in the United States will spring our clocks forward on March 14.
(Or, if you’re like me, you’ll shove one timepiece into EDT and get around to the rest sometime before the Kentucky Derby.)
Either way, it seems as though we were just luxuriating in that extra hour of sleep [...]

A month away, BusinessWeek relaunch is creating some buzz

By Robin J Phillips on Mar 09, 2010 in Basics, Story ideas

The Bloomberg BusinessWeek relaunch is still six weeks away, but it is starting to gain a lot of attention.
MediaWeek talked with ad buyers who have seen a mockup of the new designs:
Bloomberg BusinessWeek’s Bullish
In what’s being called a “bloggification” of the business magazine, BusinessWeek plans to publish more articles, but shorter ones. [...]