WHAT YOU WILL LEARN

• How are private companies structured and how are they different from public companies
• Where to find public information on private companies
• How to produce a better private-company profile

YOUR INSTRUCTOR

Jodi Schneider joined the Washington bureau of Bloomberg News as the team leader and editor for tax policy in fall 2010. Previously, she was a senior editor for American Banker, deputy editor for economics and finance at Congressional Quarterly, an assistant managing editor at U.S. News & World Report, and local business editor at The Washington Post.

She received her bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a master’s degree from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.

SELF-GUIDED LESSON

Take a look through the workshop session recording and resources below. At your own pace, you can walk through the self-guided lesson on strategies and tools for covering private companies.

Photo by flickr user Bosc d'Anjou

The four-day Webinar, “Investigating Private Companies and Nonprofits,” took place Jan. 23-26, 2012. | At the bottom of this page, you’ll find links to complete the self-guided training.

“Investigating Private Companies and Nonprofits” was also presented as two separate workshops in 2011 by award-winning experts in the mining and analysis of information on private companies and nonprofits.

AGENDA

Jan. 23: Investigating Private Companies — Finding public information on private companies – Chris Roush

Jan. 24: Investigating Nonprofits — Finding public information on nonprofits and foundations – Roush

Jan. 25: The Hidden World of Nonprofits — Digging into the new Form 990 – Ron Campbell

Jan. 26: How Ready Are You? — A case study on following the paper trail of a private company and nonprofit – Campbell

YOUR INSTRUCTORS

Ronald Campbell is a reporter for The Orange County Register. He started The Register’s program in computer-assisted reporting. He has worked on many investigations, including probes of California’s dependence on immigrant labor, the trade in human body parts, abusive charitable fund-raising tactics and fraudulent stock sales. He’s won the Gerald Loeb Award for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism, as well as awards from the National Education Writers and Investigative Reporters and Editors.

Chris Roush is the founding director of the Carolina Business News Initiative, which provides training for professional journalists and students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he teaches classes on business and economics reporting. The Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Scholar in business journalism was named the Journalism Teacher of the Year for 2009 by the Scripps Howard Foundation and the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, as well as the N.C. Professor of the Year in 2010 by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education.

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN

How to:

• Find public documents on private companies and the basics of what you’ll find in those documents, including the pitfalls
• Understand the new Form 990 and the basics of nonprofits’ finances
• Analyze and apply what you’ve learned to produce great stories

TECHNOLOGY REQUIREMENTS

You can view the PowerPoints by clicking on the links below. To download and print them, you may be asked to sign up for a free account at a third-party vendor, Slideshare, or you can download them as PDFs.

The latest version of Adobe Flash is required to view the Webinar recordings. You can download the latest version of Flash for free here.

Presentations and panel discussions covered an introduction to covering the green economy, investments in alternative energy, financials of sustainability and supply chain management challenges.

PANELISTS, PRESENTERS & MODERATORS

Click here for detailed instructor bios.

Kelly Carr is a senior online producer at the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism.

Marc Gunther writes about the impact of business on society. He is a contributing editor at FORTUNE magazine, a senior writer at Greenbiz.com, and a lead blogger at The Energy Collective.

James Hall is a business sustainability executive with proven success building high-performance organizations.

Kara Hurst is vice president of BSR and plays a crucial role in the company’s global expansion by overseeing offices on the East Coast of the United States as well as BSR’s conference and research teams.

Heather King produces two featured series for GreenBiz.com: View from the C-Suite and Greening the Icons.

Tom Konrad is a financial analyst, portfolio manager, and freelance writer specializing in renewable energy and energy efficiency investing.

Bob Langert is the vice president of corporate social responsibility for McDonald’s, a role that has him overseeing the company’s supply chain strategies and global environmental management systems.

Ido Leffler is co-founder and “chief carrot lover” of San Francisco-based Yes To Inc., the makers of Yes To Carrots, Yes To Cucumbers, Yes To Tomatoes, and Yes To Blueberries.

Adam Lowry is the co-founder and chief greenskeeper at Method Products, Inc. a leading innovator in hip, healthy home care products.

Greg Neichin is the vice president, research & advisory for Cleantech Group where he assists in evaluating cleantech companies and assessing the development of cleantech markets.

Lisa Palmer is a writer and editor covering climate change, energy and green business topics.

Veena Ramani has managed relationships with a portfolio of Ceres companies, primarily from the electric utility and financial services sectors.

Urvashi Rangan is the director of technical policy for Consumers Union, and the project director of Consumer Reports’ GreenerChoices.org.

AGENDA

• An Introduction to Covering the Green Economy — Marc Gunther (moderator) and Kara Hurst
• The Green Economy Flow — Lisa Palmer (moderator) and Greg Neichin
• The Financials of Sustainability — Marc Gunther (moderator) and Tom Konrad
• Sustainable Operations Chat with PODER’s Nicolas Ibarguen — Moderated by Lisa Palmer
• Green Productions, from the Inside Out — Marc Gunther (moderator), Ido Leffler, Adam Lowry and Urvasha Rangan
• The Sustainable Supply Chain — Heather King (moderator), Dow Jones’ David Krein, James Hall, Bob Langert and Veena Ramani

Please view session recording links in modules below.

SELF-GUIDED LESSON

Take a look through the workshop session recordings and resources below. At your own pace, you can walk through the self-guided lesson on the basics of effective green economy coverage.

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN

• How to frame an investigation as a question.
• Where to look for public documents.
• How to cast a wide net for people to talk to.
• How to get them to talk to you.

YOUR INSTRUCTOR

Matt Apuzzo is an investigative reporter in The Associated Press’ Washington bureau. He was previously The AP’s legal affairs writer in Washington, where he covered the FBI investigations of Blackwater Worldwide, Ted Stevens and Scooter Libby. He spent three years with The AP in Connecticut, where he investigated corruption in state government.

PLEASE NOTE: At the request of the instructor, access to this self-guided training is restricted to journalists, either professionals, academics or students. If you fall into one of those categories, please email Cassandra Nicholson or Linda Austin with “Request Quick-Hit Self-Guided Training Access” in the subject line to ask for the necessary password.

Click here to access self-guided materials for “Quick-Hit Business Investigations – Concept to Execution.”

Photo by Flickr user dok1.

The free workshop, “Digital Efficiency for Business Journalists – 36 Tips to Tame Info Overload,” was originally held at City University New York (CUNY) Graduate School of Journalism on Oct. 13. This training was hosted by the Society of American Business Editors and Writers (SABEW) and preceded their Fall Conference.

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN

• How to manage email by batching, filtering and practicing “Inbox Zero.”
• How to efficiently organize and back up documents.
• How to streamline social media.
• How to make the most of calendars, to-do lists and voicemail.
• How to stay sane amidst the flood of digital information.

YOUR INSTRUCTOR

Jeremy Caplan is the director of education for the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism. He is also a Ford Fellow in Entrepreneurial Journalism at the Poynter Institute.

Caplan was a Wiegers Fellow at Columbia Business School, where he completed his MBA, and a Knight-Bagehot Fellow at the Columbia Journalism School, where he earned an M.S. in Journalism.

SELF-GUIDED LESSON

Take a look through the workshop session recording and resources below. At your own pace, you can walk through the self-guided lesson on the basics of digital efficiency and strategies for data management.

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN

• How to understand public companies’ financial statements, with special emphasis on income (profit/loss) and cash-flow statements.
• Best ways to find stories in earnings reports and cash-flow statements.
• How to analyze companies’ financials using common-size analysis.
• Tips for finding public documents on private companies, and knowing the basics of what you’ll find in those documents, including their limitations.
• How to understand the new IRS Form 990 and how to find stories on nonprofits’ finances in it.

YOUR INSTRUCTORS
(in order of appearance)

James K. Gentry is a professor and former dean at the School of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Kansas. Over the past 25 years, he has taught thousands of journalists how to understand the language of business. He received the Barry Sherman Teaching Award from the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.

Chris Roush is the founding director of the Carolina Business News Initiative, which provides training for professional journalists and students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he teaches classes on business and economics reporting. The Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Scholar in business journalism was named the Journalism Teacher of the Year for 2009 by the Scripps Howard Foundation .

Ronald Campbell is a reporter for The Orange County Register. He started The Register’s program in computer-assisted reporting. He has worked on many investigations, including probes of California’s dependence on immigrant labor, the trade in human body parts, abusive charitable fund-raising tactics and fraudulent stock sales.

SELF-GUIDED LESSON

Take a look through the workshop session recording and resources below. At your own pace, you can walk through the self-guided lesson on tips, techniques and resources for better business coverage in your area.

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN

• Find and download online databases.
• How to use Excel spreadsheets to analyze that information. No previous experience with Excel is expected.
• How to translate that analysis into business stories.

YOUR INSTRUCTOR

Jaimi Dowdell joined IRE as a training director in October 2008. She taught this workshop in Atlanta and Milwaukee in 2010. Before joining IRE, she was computer-assisted reporting editor at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for more than three years. Her duties included obtaining and analyzing data for daily and long-term stories; training staff on CAR and investigative techniques; and maintaining the newspaper’s online data center. In addition to her work at the Post-Dispatch, she taught a CAR course for Washington University in St. Louis.

SELF-GUIDED LESSON

Take a look through the workshop session recording and resources below. At your own pace, you can walk through the self-guided lesson on how to best utilize online databases and tools for business journalism investigations.

The Commercial Appeal found that the true cost of government incentives to lure 1,240 new Electrolux jobs to Memphis had not been reported. Photo by Flickr user stevendepolo.

Sometimes the allure of new jobs distracts people from tallying their actual cost. But Daniel Connolly and Amos Maki of The Commercial Appeal didn’t shy away from asking about the true costs of  bringing 1,240 Electrolux jobs to Memphis.

“Sometimes it’s very difficult to ask questions, especially when the community is down on its luck,” Daniel says. “There was some degree of surprise that someone would be looking at it.”

In exchange for bringing in the 1,240 jobs, the appliance maker received a government-incentive package totaling $153.6 million. But, as Daniel and Amos explored deeper, they found that the amount was greater. They write:

“That figure did not include the value of local property-tax breaks approved by the Memphis and Shelby County Industrial Development Board, which raised the total amount of support to $188.3 million, or about $152,000 per job.

That figure also excluded other pledges made to the company, based on a review by The Commercial Appeal of internal emails, contracts and other public documents.”

Those other pledges included exemption from requirements about hiring minorities and using minority vendors in exchange for local property-tax breaks, and an agreement to keep competing appliance businesses from locating near the factory, Daniel writes.

Daniel Connolly

Daniel says he attended the Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) Conference in June, which helped point him in the right direction. He offers these tips he learned and applied to this story.

• Tip 1: Ask for written guidelines to see whether the same standards would be applied to other companies.

• Tip 2: Calculate how much the company is receiving.

• Tip 3: Check the company’s history. He says to look for political contributions, its track record with regulators and any subsidies received in the past.

• Tip 4: Read every page of the company’s agreement. When Daniel read the Electrolux agreement, he says he found that the city and county wouldn’t receive a refund under any circumstances.

• Tip 5: Check the economic-impact studies for inconsistencies. Daniel found that “the only due-diligence report Tennessee completed for the Electrolux project was a six-page document that celebrated the benefits and didn’t consider the costs of subsidies.” (If you’re interested in learning more about how to analyze local economic studies, sign up for the free Reynolds Center Webinar on Feb. 8-9: How Not to Be Bamboozled by Local Economic Studies.)

• Tip 6: Use public record requests. Daniel requested emails and letters between the company and government to get additional details.

And here are some more tips from that IRE Conference that Daniel attended on tracking whether the incentives provided by governments have resulted in the number of jobs promised:

Goodjobsfirst.org is an advocacy organization, but it has a number of resources on its site, including a Subsidy Tracker. Other experts include reporter Jim Heaney of The Buffalo News and Professor Heywood T. Sanders at the University of Texas at San Antonio. | Tip sheet (PDF): Reporting on economic-development subsidies by Jim Heaney of The Buffalo News.

This Webinar builds on these Webinars, “How to Be an Entrepreneur as a Journalist” and “How to Be an Entrepreneur as a Business Journalist,” which were held in 2010.

Photo by Flickr user quazifoto

AGENDA

Aug. 16: Who Hires Freelance Business Journalists? — A wealth of opportunities is available for freelance business journalists in the traditional, new media, trade, academic, newsletter and custom-publishing fields. Too many freelancers think their options end with newspapers and consumer magazines.

Aug. 17: Branding and Marketing Yourself — Learn how to evaluate your brand identity and marketing messages. How much should it cost to market yourself? Check out these specific examples of how real freelancers have used 20 different tools (business cards, advertising, PR, direct mail, networking, trade shows, speaking, joint ventures, ezines, link exchanges, Google Ad Words, search engine optimization, affiliate programs, e-mail marketing, article marketing, blogging, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube) to reach new clients.

Aug. 18: Closing the Sale — How do you get from a lead to a prospect to a customer to a client? How do you win repeat business? What are the best electronic options for storing and organizing prospect, customer and client data? How can you evaluate your sales and marketing efforts and improve results?

Aug. 19: Ask the Hiring Editors — Get your questions answered in an online panel discussion with editors who hire freelance journalists. Find out how to establish and maintain good client relationships. Check out “Additional Resources” below for profiles and Q&As on members of the panel.

Maya Payne Smart

YOUR INSTRUCTOR

After spending six years in the trenches as a freelance business journalist, Maya Payne Smart founded WritingCoach.com to help journalists, authors and other writers build profitable businesses. Her mission is to provide the tools, information and advice that freelancers need to thrive, from marketing basics to advanced business-building strategies.

With Poynter.org careers columnist Joe Grimm, she taught the Reynolds Center’s highly successful “How to Be an Entrepreneur as a Business Journalist” Webinars in 2009 and 2010.

“Business journalists are poised to succeed as freelancers because they can read financial statements and analyze business trends, but too often they fail because of an ingrained disdain for sales. They want to write and report, but haven’t worked up sufficient enthusiasm for market research, self-promotion and pitching,” she said.

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN

• Who is looking for freelance business journalists
• How to decide whom you want to work with
• How to consistently turn leads into clients

TECHNOLOGY REQUIREMENTS

You can view the PowerPoints by clicking on the links below. To download and print them, you will be asked to sign up for a free account at a third-party vendor, Slideshare, or you can download them as PDFs.

The latest version of Adobe Flash is required to view the Webinar recordings. You can download that latest version of Flash for free here.

Photo by Flickr user armigeress

The free workshop, “Covering Business on Tribal Lands,” was originally held at the Native American Journalists Association Conference, July 13, 2011 in Fort Lauderdale.

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN

• How to find and dissect public documents on private companies
• Tips for analyzing the new Form 990
• How to understand the basics of nonprofits’ finances
• Tips for watching business trends and using techniques for reporting financial stories on tribal lands

Resources and tools offered in the presentations may also be used for broader business investigations.

YOUR INSTRUCTORS

Chris Roush, as the Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Scholar in business journalism, was named the Journalism Teacher of the Year for 2009 by the Scripps Howard Foundation and the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, as well as the N.C. Professor of the Year in 2010 by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education.

Jodi Schneider joined the Washington bureau of Bloomberg News as the team leader and editor for tax policy in fall 2010. Previously, she was a senior editor for American Banker, deputy editor for economics and finance at Congressional Quarterly, an assistant managing editor at U.S. News & World Report, and local business editor at The Washington Post. She is a past president of the Society of American Business Editors and Writers and has taught journalism courses at the college level.

Marley Shebala is a senior reporter for the Navajo Times. Her investigations have led to the downfall of two Tribal presidents for misuse of finances and have garnered multiple awards. She is a three-time winner of the Native American Journalists Association’s Richard LaCourse Award for investigative reporting and was named Arizona Community Journalist of the Year by the Arizona Press Club.

Joan Timeche is the executive director of the Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy at The University of Arizona. She is a regular speaker at both regional and national conferences on topics related to Indian economic development and tourism, and is a recognized expert on doing business on Indian lands. A citizen of the Hopi Tribe from the village of Old Oraibi, she received her bachelor’s degree in social work and an M.B.A. from Northern Arizona University.

SELF-GUIDED LESSON

Take a look through the workshop session recording and resources below. At your own pace, you can walk through the self-guided lesson on how to pursue and write financial investigative stories with greater confidence – both on and off tribal lands.