We’ve added two new tutorials to our lineup of daily tips, news and free training on this site.

They are:

• 

  Essential Math for Business Journalists

  Essential Math for Business Journalists: Maybe you went into journalism to avoid math, but fear not. Most analysis in business journalism involves just basic arithmetic. Review the formulas in this tutorial, and in 20 minutes, you’ll be up to speed on how to calculate percent of a whole, percentage change, average, median and mode, plus how to round. Your instructor is yours truly, Linda Austin, executive director of the Reynolds Center.

• Magic with Google Spreadsheets: Google spreadsheets are a powerful tool for business journalists that combines the strengths of traditional spreadsheets, such as Excel, with the ability to import and edit data; style, analyze and chart data; create a “magic” spreadsheet that will automatically update with current stock data; and share, publish and embed data and charts online. In this 25-minute tutorial with Jeremy Caplan, director of education at the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at the City University of New York’s Graduate School of Journalism, you’ll learn how to use Google spreadsheets to do all of the above.

The tutorials explain concepts using audio and video and also include quizzes, making them interactive. Download Adobe Reader for free to use them. You can find “Tutorials” under the drop-down menu for “Tools” in the green navigation bar at the top of this page.

You’ll also see in that drop-down menu, “Self-guided training.” Self-guided training usually consists of videos from past training events, either workshops or Webinars, with the handouts and PowerPoints. You can also review those at your leisure; the videos are normally an hour or more. They are not usually interactive, although in some cases, the instructor’s PowerPoint is embedded in the video and can be used to skip forward and back in the video.

Magic with Google Spreadsheets

WHAT TUTORIALS WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE?

We plan to add more tutorials in the coming months and would like your ideas on which ones you’d like to see. Some possible topics include:

• Better Business Writing
• Understanding Financial Statements
• Covering Private Companies
• Covering Financial Markets
• Covering the Economy
• Deciphering SEC Filings
• Covering Unemployment and Labor Markets
• Covering Bankruptcy Court
• Covering Nonprofits

Three ways to tell us what you’d like next:

1. Quick poll
2. Or e-mail me at linda.austin@businessjournalism.org
3. Or leave your ideas in the comment box below.

We welcome your feedback on these first two tutorials as well as your ideas on what the next ones should be.

• import data from Excel or input your own data and then share it with others.
• access the spreadsheet from anywhere you have Internet service, including your smartphone.
• create charts or tables that can be embedded in Web pages.
• insert formulas for data on stocks, allowing online spreadsheets and charts to update automatically with the most current information.

What You Will Learn

Through a series of short videos and quizzes, you will learn how to use Google spreadsheets to:

• import and edit data.
• style, analyze and chart data.
• create a “magic” spreadsheet that will automatically update with current market data.
• share, publish and embed data and charts online.

Tutorial Length

The tutorial will take 25 minutes to complete.

Your Instructor

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

Technical Requirements

To access the tutorial, you will need Adobe Reader, which you can download for free. You will also need a computer with Internet access and speakers to hear the audio.

Once clicked, the tutorial will play automatically. It may take a few minutes to load. You can pause the tutorial at any time by clicking the pause button. To restart, click the pause button again. Click on buttons with arrows to advance or backtrack through the slides, or use the list of slides on the side to skip around in the tutorial.

Tutorial instructions

Click the link below to download the tutorial, which is a PDF that you will view using Adobe Reader (download it). It will take a few minutes to load and then will play automatically. (In Chrome, you will be asked if you want to “Open in Adobe Reader?” Click, “Yes.”)  You can pause the tutorial at any time by clicking the pause button. To restart, click the pause button again. Click on the buttons with arrows to advance or backtrack through the slides, or use the list of slides on the side to skip around in the tutorial.

What else would you like to learn?

We welcome your feedback on this tutorial and on which other subjects you’d like us to develop tutorials. Please e-mail Linda Austin, executive director of the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism, or call 602-496-9187. This free tutorial — and free workshops and Webinars — offered by the Reynolds Center are made possible by a grant from the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation. The center also provides daily tips on how to cover business better on its website, BusinessJournalism.org.

Maybe you went into journalism to avoid math, but fear not. Most analysis in business journalism involves just basic arithmetic. Review the formulas in this tutorial, and in 20 minutes, you’ll be up to speed on how to calculate percent of a whole, percentage change, average, median and mode, plus how to round.

What You Will Learn

How to:

• Calculate percent of a whole and percentage change.
• Calculate average (or mean), median and mode.
• Round numbers.
• Use percent versus percentage point.

The tutorial will explain each concept and then offer you a chance to apply what you’ve learned to a real-world exercise. It concludes with an 11-question quiz, again using examples that business journalists are likely to encounter, plus a resource list of books and websites for more information.

Tutorial Length

The tutorial will take about 20 minutes to complete.

Your Instructor

A former business editor at The Philadelphia Inquirer, Linda Austin became executive director of the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism in 2009.

Technical Requirements

To access the tutorial, you will need Adobe Reader, which you can download for free. You will also need a computer with Internet access and speakers to hear the audio.

Tutorial instructions

Please click the link below to download the tutorial, which is a PDF that you will view using Adobe Reader (download it). It will take a few minutes to load and then will play automatically. (In Chrome, you will be asked if you want to “Open in Adobe Reader?” Click, “Yes.”) You can pause the tutorial at any time by clicking the pause button. To restart, click the pause button again. Click on the buttons with arrows to advance or backtrack through the slides, or use the list of slides on the side to skip around in the tutorial.

Essential Math for Business Journalists

What else would you like to learn?

We welcome your feedback on this tutorial and on which other subjects you’d like us to develop tutorials. Please e-mail Linda Austin, executive director of the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism, or call 602-496-9187. This free tutorial — and free workshops and Webinars — offered by the Reynolds Center are made possible by a grant from the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation. The center also provides daily tips on how to cover business better on its website, BusinessJournalism.org.

Leslie Wayne

For more than 20 years, Leslie Wayne was an award-winning New York Times business reporter, covering a broad swath of corporate America.  In spring 2010, she was the Reynolds Visiting Professor in Business Journalism at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

While at the Times, she specialized in investigative and enterprise reporting on Wall Street, corporate governance, municipal finance, military contractors and the Pentagon budget. She also covered multinational corporations, including reporting on the Paris Air Show.

She uses her experiences to illustrate this lecture delivered March 4, 2010, to an audience of 23 international journalists. The visitors were studying business and economics reporting in the United States at the invitation of the U.S. State Department. | Video and presentation: Leslie Wayne: Covering multi-national companies.

Wayne has an MBA in finance from Columbia University, where she was a Knight-Bagehot Fellow in Economics and Business Journalism.

University of Arizona professor David Cuillier stopped in Phoenix to explain how to access public records as part of SPJ's Access Across America tour.

University of Arizona journalism professor David Cuillier offers advice on how to unlock the power of public records. In this video, he provided tips at Arizona State University’s Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication as part of a 45-day tour of the United States called Access Across America. The 2010 training tour is funded by SPJ’s Sigma Delta Chi Foundation, the National Freedom of Information Coalition and the University of Arizona.

You can use his PowerPoint, which is next to the video, to skip to different parts of the lecture.

Cuillier is the co-author with Charles Davis of a new book, “The Art of Access: Strategies for Acquiring Public Records,” and researches the psychology of getting access. He blogs about news and tips on public records. You can reach him by e-mail or at 520-626-9694.

Cuillier is handing out this 33-page booklet called, “Unlocking the Power of Public Records,” while on tour.

Some reporters pan for the nuggets on their beat. Others use maps to find the buried treasures. Joe Grimm, who writes the “Ask the Recruiter” column for Poynter.org, explains three styles of beat mapping.

One maps relationships, one charts coverage plans and one details the insides of organizations or industries.

Take a look through the descriptions, resources, tools put together by Joe Grimm to get a better understanding of ways to beat map.

In his 18 years as the recruiter for the Detroit Free Press, Grimm helped hundreds of journalists make the connections that got them their next job.

In 1997, Grimm launched the JobsPage, a journalism career site. He spun off a journalism careers blog,Ask the Recruiter, in 2003; it became part of Poynter Online’s Career Center in 2006. He has been a regular contributor to Editor & Publisher magazine, the Newspaper Association of America’s Fusion magazine and UNITY: Journalists of Color. Joe Grimm is a visiting journalist at Michigan State University’s School of Journalism. He was a newsroom recruiter and staff development editor at the Detroit Free Press from 1990 until 2008.

RESOURCES FROM GRIMM’S WEBINAR

One-hour Webinar recordings:
Day 1 – Using networks to better cover the business beat and advance your career.
Day 2 – Making strategic connections.

POWERPOINT – DAY 1

POWERPOINT – DAY 2

J. Banaszynski

On Feb. 8-9, 2010, Pulitzer Prize-winner Jacqui Banaszynski shared ways to write complex, breaking business news stories for the Web. Banaszynski, the Knight Chair in Editing and Reynolds Fellow at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, is a regular presenter at APME NewsTrain and the National Writers Workshops. She has taught at American Press Institute, the University of Kansas and the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, and has served as a Pulitzer juror.  

 RESOURCES FROM BANASZYNSKI’S WEBINAR   

One-hour Webinar recordings:
Day 1 – Deadline breaking basics for fast-breaking business online
Day 2 – Going fast and going deep: How to plan for layered coverage that helps organize your reporting and writing online POWERPOINT – Day 1   

POWERPOINT – Day 2
  

WRITING FOR THE WEB HANDOUTS (PDFs) 

From left: My-Ly Nguyen, business editor, Press & Sun Bulletin; Shawna Turner, business reporter, Williamsport Sun-Gazette; and Lee Miller, career columnist, New Jersey Star-Ledger.

We were in Philly Friday, Jan. 22, for a daylong workshop on “Tracking the Economic Recovery in Your Town.”

Sessions included one from Ryan Sweet, senior economist with Moody’s Economy.com,  who talked about which local economic statistics are worth following.

Sweet was joined by Melissa Preddy, who brainstormed story ideas and identified resources for local economic stories. Preddy is a blogger for BusinessJournalism.org and a former business reporter, editor and columnist for The Detroit News.

Ron Nixon, projects reporter for The New York Times, talked about ways to follow the economic-stimulus and TARP money coming out of Washington, where he is based.

On Twitter, we used the hashtag #BizJ.

Click on the link and then click on whether you want to view the video a high-speed or slow-speed version.

FINANCIALS SEMINAR

1. ‘Credit Crisis and Market Crash of 2008: What’s Next?,’ Reynolds Business Journalism Week, Jan. 8, 2010, 8:15 a.m.
VIDEO – this session begins at about 19 minutes.

2. ‘Credit Crisis and Market Crash of 2008: What’s Next?,’ continued, Reynolds Business Journalism Week, Jan. 8, 2010,10 a.m.
VIDEO – the session begins at about the 10-minute mark.

PROFESSORS SEMINAR

1.’Finding Business in Every Beat,’ Reynolds Business Journalism Week, Jan. 8, 10 a.m.
VIDEO -the session begins at the 21-minute mark.