BusinessJournalism.org Reynolds Center for Business Journalism

Business journalists are gearing up for SABEW

Robin J Phillips — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 19:01:09 +0000

This is a busy week for business journalists… at least for those who have the time to network and share their knowledge.

SABEW’s annual conference is being held in Phoenix, March 18-21. Reynolds Center staff are lucky because the event is being held in the building as our HQ. So many of us will be able to attend sessions. We plan to LIVE blog as much as we can and pass along tips and resources we pick up at the SABEW sessions.

MORE RESOURCES:

SABEW.org

SABEW 2010 schedule

Two reporters win Reynolds Center scholarships to SABEW

And we’ll compile coverage all week: Reynolds Center, BusinessJournalism.org SABEW 2010

Daily story idea chat

Robin J Phillips — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 15:00:58 +0000

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 we’re seeing in business coverage. But this is your page, your chat. Jump in.

What worked for you? What are you trying today? Or if you’re feeling competitive … what did you try last week?

Think of two-person business desk somewhere in the U.S. What can you help them with? What can you learn from them? And what if you are from that business desk? What perspective could you share with national reporters?

Let’s share. Stop on by. We’ll keep the chat open from 11 a.m. – 3 p.m. EST. If you like it, if this idea works, we’ll do it daily. We’ll kick things off. You take it over.

Week beginning Monday, March 15

Daily Story Idea Chat – week of March 15
Week beginning Monday, March 8

Daily Story Idea Chat – week of March 8

MORE ARCHIVES OF STORY-IDEA CHATS

Business Story-Idea Chat archive

NPR reporters explain toxic assets by buying their own

Rosland Gammon — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 12:00:22 +0000

How many stories have you read that talk about toxic assets? To get up close and personal with the concept and therefore be better able to explain it to their audience, two NPR Planet Money reporters bought their own toxic asset. It is a bond consisting of home mortgages — of which only 30 percent of the borrowers are current on their payments. Using $1,000 of their own money, they bought the toxic asset to provide “an up-close look at what’s happening with the bonds that fueled the housing boom, then fell apart in the bust.” They also created an interactive graphic. Reporters Chana Joffe-Walt and David Kestenbaum write:

“Finally, we find a beautiful, totally toxic asset at… a good price: $36,000. Back in the bubble, somebody paid $2.7 million for this thing. We buy a piece… for $1,000. It’s going to be our encyclopedia of the financial crisis.”

Today’s Tip: Sometimes getting involved in a story will allow your audience to better understand what’s happening.

The reporters’ participation and investment in this story provide a more compelling look than simply telling us what toxic assets are. They are also using the opportunity to seek previous owners of their toxic asset or mortgage holders whose loans were bundled into it by appealing for them to e-mail the reporters. Those who respond will also help put a human face on toxic assets.

Help readers run with the bulls

Melissa Preddy — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 12:00:19 +0000

By flickr.com user mvhargan

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 change – especially with consumer sentiment still very cautious, as Friday’s University of Michigan report showed.

But while market gyrations are bound to continue this year, individuals who’ve sat on the sidelines the past couple of seasons may be getting antsy. And thanks to new-found consumer prudence, they may have money to invest: A Federal Reserve report late last week showed that household wealth in the U.S. actually rose in late 2009 for the third straight quarter, mostly due to a reduction in debt. It’s still off by more than 20 percent, the Washington Post notes, from pre-recession levels. But as more Americans recoup jobs and improve their cash flow, it stands to reason they’ll be looking for a place to stash the dough.

Especially if they read stories like this one from CNN Money, about the alarming state of retirement savings. Based on a survey by the Employee Benefit Research Institute, CNN Money reports that 43 percent of those polled had less than $10,000 in retirement funds, with 20 percent saying they had stowed less than $1,000.

Most business writers don’t have the expertise to dole out investing advice, but we can point readers in the right direction. If your publication doesn’t already run a Q&A column with respected experts providing the “As,” consider volunteering to set up one. Nitty-gritty advice based on real scenarios draws audiences like few other business features. Be sure to screen and edit the letters before passing them along to the experts, who should have impeccable credentials – preferably the Certified Financial Planner badge. Find such planners near you with a ZIP-code search at the group’s national site. Live chats with planners once a week or so can also boost your online audience.

If you can’t commit to a standing feature, try to squeeze in an investing centerpiece. Use a framework like “What to do if you’re in your 20s … 30s…40s…” because the time horizon is so important in retirement planning. Or, you might run a feature on how to rebalance a portfolio that’s way out of whack due to fluctuations in share prices and investors’ reluctance to open their 401(k) statements.

Ask planners to provide real-life, before-and-after, asset-allocation scenarios based on portfolios they’ve tweaked in the past month or two, and make sure to add a few lines of explanation about each change.

If you aren’t comfortable with investing terminology, brush up before tackling this type of story, because nuances count when writing about personal finance. I highly recommend Morningstar Inc.’s free investing classroom. You must register, providing some personal information, but the 172 self-paced modules will give you the grounding every business writer should have in stocks, bond, mutual funds and other investing

Backgrounding people and businesses

Linda Austin — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 04:18:46 +0000

Jaimi Dowdell, training director for IRE, speaks at the 2010 CAR Conference at the Cronkite School on backgrounding people and businesses.

Jaimi Dowdell, training director for IRE, recommended that you have a strategy when it comes to using the Web as an investigative tool.

“Know what you’re after,” she told sessions on the concluding day of the CAR Conference in Phoenix. “Know what is available, and know when enough is enough.”

She also advised a healthy dose of skepticism when it comes to Web information: “Treat each online source just as you would any other.”

For backgrounding people, she starts with Google, plus at least one other search engine, such as Bing, Yahoo, Ask, Clusty, jux2 or Twingine.

She also checks zoominfo.com, but cautions that the information can often be outdated. Then, she uses zabasearch to look for an address for the person. She said she has used a municipality’s pet-license database to find otherwise unpublished cell-phone numbers. Accurint is a paid site that has some cell-phone numbers.

She suggested whitepages.com to locate neighbors. “Do a reverse look-up to find the address, then select the person’s name and finally click on ‘neighbors,’” she advised.

One way to determine whether the address is accurate is to check property records at your local assessor’s or recorder of deeds office to see if the person owns the residence. Many of those records are online, and you can use BRB Publications’ “awesome” free public records portal to find them, she said.

Next, she suggested checking criminal records on criminalsearches.com. She cautioned that the information on this site is incomplete. You can also run someone’s name through your state’s inmates database and the national sex offenders’ database.

She also recommended searching for the person on these sites that specialize in searching the deep, or invisible, Web that Google doesn’t search:

Facebook
Pipl
123people
Whostalkin
Samepoint
Icerocket

When backgrounding a business, she starts with its Web site and then moves on to licenses and business filings, including corporate records at your secretary of state’s office, city business licenses, fictitious business names and professional licenses. For the rules on “doing business as” names in your state, check business.gov, and to find professional licenses in your state, look up your state at BRB’s site.

Check for lawsuits in the courts and UCC (Uniform Commercial Code) lien searches on your state secretary of state’s site. Try federal tax court for tax disputes.

For publicly traded companies, the Securities and Exchange Commission’s EDGAR database of filings is a treasure trove, and for nonprofits, GuideStar.org has their 990 tax forms.

To see if the company has hired any lobbyists, query the Lobbying Disclosure Act Database. And check on the results of Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) inspections.

You can also find out if the company has registered any trademarks or patents.

USAspending.gov and FedSpending.org, a project of OMB Watch, can help you figure out if the company has received federal funds.

Dowdell can be reached at jaimi@ire.org.

Beyond Google — using the Web as an investigative tool

Linda Austin — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 04:10:04 +0000

Here are some tips from Jaimi Dowdell, training director for IRE, on using the Web as an investigative tool:

Use advanced search on Google plus at least one other search engine to search for phrases, domain types, file types, or words in a URL. For example, if you are looking for government data, search for the file types .xls, .xlsx or .zip on sites with the .gov domain. You can also look for URLs with the word, “download,” in them and the .gov domain.
Use the links at the bottom of the page on Wikipedia.org as a resource to lead you to potentially better information.
Try these federal sites when you’re looking for specific data: Census, FedStats and FirstGov.
In addition to BRB Publications, the University of Virginia also maintains a public records portal.
Here are two reporter-vetted portals: NICAR ‘Net Tour and Reporter’s Desktop by Duff Wilson.
ChangeDetection.com will send you an e-mail when a site you’ve registered has been updated.
BugMeNot offers ways of getting into password-protected sites, such as newspapers.
For tracking what’s happening on Twitter, try Monitter or Twitter’s search.
To find out who is behind a Web site, try Domain Tools or Allwhois.
For the “dead Web,” or historic versions of sites, use cached sites on Google, the Wayback Machine, the Library of Congress’ MINERVA for specific recent events or the CyberCemetery for defunct government agencies.

Following federal economic-stimulus funds to your backyard

Linda Austin — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 03:21:01 +0000

Reporters Michael Grabell of ProPublica.org and Ben Poston of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel offered several online sites that can help you track economic-stimulus funds to your state or county.

“Stimulus is a completely local story,” Grabell said. “Everywhere you go, you can find an interesting story in your backyard.”

ProPublica, the nonprofit investigative news site, just updated its Recovery Tracker database this week to provide information on stimulus-fund recipients down to the county level. “The Recovery Tracker includes all the data used on the government’s stimulus Web site, Recovery.gov, and thousands of records the feds didn’t include—the law doesn’t require all recipients to report to Recovery.gov…. Altogether, they’re the most comprehensive publicly available analysis of stimulus spending,” ProPublica says. It will also make the data supporting Recovery Tracker available upon request. “Just fill out this form, and we’ll get you state data within 48 hours,” it says.

Grabell and Poston also suggest these sites to help track stimulus funds:

ProPublica.org reporter Michael Grabell (left) and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Ben Poston lead a CAR Conference session on how to track economic-stimulus funds to your county.

Federal Data Procurement Data System has an Excel spreadsheet of stimulus contracts that is more up to date than Recovery.gov. You can search by city or county and find out if the company is minority-owned. However, it includes only federal projects, not road projects that are contracted by the states.
fedbizopps.gov provides information on bid solicitations by the federal government.
USASpending.gov contains information on contracts, grants and loans. “Click on spending, then contracts/grants/loans and advanced search for place of performance,” they advise in a tipsheet.
Excluded Parties List System contains contractors and others who have been prohibited from receiving federal money. Check this database for stimulus recipients who have had problems in the past. Local governments also have lists of ineligible recipients.
Federal Audit Clearinghouse has detailed reports on nonprofits and other federal grantees. The Sunlight Foundation matched up this database with stimulus recipients.
Cash for Clunkers has information on the vehicles traded in and bought under this program, which was extended with stimulus funds. In ProPublica’s Recovery Tracker, each county’s page has a button that allows you to click and see which dealers benefited the most from the program.
NIH grants database offers information about research, including the principal investigator, funded with stimulus funds.
New America Media put together a database of SBA loans that included the race and gender of recipients of ARC loans under the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. ARC stands for America’s Recovery Capital, and the program can lend up to $35,000 per borrower interest-free. It found few minorities had received loans.
Starting in March 2010, states have to report monthly and quarterly data to the Energy Department on the number of housing units weatherized, including demographic information for each household.
The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) produces 50-page bimonthly reports for 16 states and the District of Columbia on how each one is using stimulus money. The states are Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas.

Contact Ben Poston at bposton@journalsentinel.com and Michael Grabell at michael.grabell@propublica.org.

Using home-mortgage data to identify top 25 subprime lenders

Linda Austin — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 01:25:41 +0000

David Donald, data editor for the Center for Public Integrity, explains how he used Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data to identify the nation's top 25 subprime lenders.

David Donald, data editor for the nonprofit Center for Public Integrity, described how he and his colleagues used Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data to identify the nation’s top 25 subprime lenders from 2005 to 2007, a period encompassing the peak and collapse of the subprime boom. Subprime loans are high-interest loans to borrowers with less than sterling creditworthiness.

The center reported in May 2009 in “Who’s Behind the Financial Meltdown?” that “the top subprime lenders whose loans are largely blamed for triggering the global economic meltdown were owned or backed by giant banks now collecting billions of dollars in bailout money — including several that have paid huge fines to settle predatory lending charges.

“The banks that funded the subprime industry were not victims of an unforeseen financial collapse, as they have sometimes portrayed themselves, but enablers that bankrolled the type of lending threatening the financial system.”

In explaining his methodology during a CAR Conference session on probing banks and mortgage lenders, Donald said the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data are available from the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council or from IRE.org’s Database Library. The center analyzed loan application records for nearly 7.2 million subprime loans. The top 25 originators of these loans accounted for nearly $1 trillion, or about 72 percent of such loans made during that period, it reported.

As a starting point to understanding the fields in the data — originally required by the federal government to track potential racial discrimination in lending — he recommended tipsheet #3090 by John Maines, CAR editor of the South Florida Sun Sentinel, available on IRE.org.

The key field to work with in tracking subprime lenders was the one called the spread, he said. Because there is no standard definition of what constitutes a subprime, or high-interest, loan, he considered those loans as subprime that had a spread of three percentage points or more in the loan’s interest rate above the comparable Treasury bond at that time.

He recommended economist Karen Pence, who works for the Federal Reserve System Board of Governors, as a resource in figuring out how to pull subprime lenders out of the home-mortgage data. He also said economist Glenn B. Canner writes a analysis in the Federal Reserve Bulletin each year on what’s going on with the home-mortgage data.

To look how the mortgages were securitized, he suggested searching the Securities and Exchange Commission’s EDGAR database of filings for Form 424B5, a prospectus that outlines the tranches of loans, separated by credit ratings from high-grade to toxic.

Donald can be reached at ddonald@publicintegrity.org.

IRE TIPSHEET

Data for tracking the sub-prime story. (PDF)

Become your newsroom’s master of numbers

Kelly Carr — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 01:16:41 +0000

By Flickr user Kevin Dooley

Percent of total. Margin of error. Mean, median and mode.

These words could conjure up a college statistics class you desperately tried to avoid. But for journalists who want to assess large amounts of data, a basic knowledge of these computing methods will go a long way.

In a session called “Necessary Numbers for the Newsroom, ” Jaimi Dowdell of Investigative Reporters and Editors and Jennifer LaFleur of Propublica reviewed some math rules every reporter should master.

One of my favorites: Adjust money for inflation by checking in with the Consumer Price Index for your area. Make sure you also have a handle on percent change, per capita and margin of error.

After you get those down, follow Dowdell and LaFleur’s list of what to avoid to ensure your story doesn’t include simple errors:

False accuracy: 12.35 percent of people surveyed said…
The superlative of silliness: California has more doctors than any other state. Wisconsin has the most wall-eyed fishing accidents in the country.
Saying something is “significant” when you really don’t know or “more likely” without understanding the data.
The spurious correlation – saying something correlates when there’s probably something else behind it.
Caving into editor’s love of ranking.
Ignoring “don’t knows” and non-responses in surveys and polls.
Mixing up change and percent change.
Confusing percentage points with percentage difference.
Not putting numbers into context: “Crime increased 50 percent” but we don’t know what the rate was.

Now that you know what to avoid, here are some Web sites and recommended books from Dowdell and LaFleur’s math tipsheet to help you conquer your number fears:

Think you’ve mastered math? Take this test to find out.
The IRE Resource Center has many tipsheets focusing on math. Search for words like “math or “statistics.”
“Statistics every writer should know.” In a pinch, this site has some answers to the very basic math questions you may have.
Dr. Math is not geared toward journalists, but it can be helpful if you need to look up math terms or find more complicated information.
“Numbers in the Newsroom: Using Math and Statistics in News,” by Sarah Cohen for Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc.
“Precision Journalism,” by Philip Meyer.
“How to Lie with Statistics,” by Darrell Huff and John Allen Paulos.
“A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper,” by Darrell Huff
and John Allen Paulos..

Searching for biz stories in campaign finance data

Kelly Carr — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 21:32:48 +0000

To stay on top of campaign finance the site FollowTheMoney.org is a must-have search tool.

The site aggregates data to “reveal the influence of campaign money on state-level elections and public policy in all 50 states.” The stats are a great resource for understanding how campaign cash plays out in your local coverage area and how that relates to what’s happening nationally. Plus, the numbers are downloadable and easy to navigate.

An interactive map from FollowTheMoney.org

There are lots of opportunities for tracking data on this site, including learning about campaign finance contributions in your district and sorting through a list of the top 10,000 donors to state and federal political campaigns.

A section called “Recovery Watch” details how many contractors who gave campaign contributions were awarded stimulus money. The database identifies 323 contractors that fell into this category, a relatively small number, but still worth exploring to see if any fall into your coverage area.

It’s also not a bad idea to keep tabs on the special “Names in the News” reports. These databases focus on a particular person of interest and connect their campaign contributions. The most recent one highlighted Timothy S. Durham, who ran an alleged Ponzi scheme.