The Orange County Register Scores with Subprime Piece

By Dick Weiss
Sept. 11, 2007

Many newspapers have followed the subprime debacle but none perhaps more effectively than The Orange County Register. The Register used its computer-assisted reporting muscle, its knowledge of county neighborhoods and its gifts for insight and analysis to deliver a compelling story about one Hispanic neighborhood. On the lighter side, Dick’s picks features a story on the games people play in the workplace and a delightful first-person piece on a day spent with an air-conditioning repairman. 

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3 High Tech Playground

Jessica Guynn of The San Francisco Chronicle

Generally speaking, we spend more time in the workplace than we do with our families; more time than we do sleeping (not counting falling asleep at business meetings.) So why do we see so few stories about what actually happens on a day-to-day basis in our offices?  This bright little story looks at the games we play in the office. And, as usual, Silicon Valley is a trend setter with a game resurrected from the school yard called Four-Square. The editors ran this piece on the front page.

2 A Day with an Air Conditioning Repairman

Richard Mullins of the Tampa Tribune

This wry and witty take on the life of an air-conditioning repairman educates as well as entertains. You learn how much an HVAC repairman makes and how AC units work. Mullins puts himself in the story but not too much. Show this to your editor if he or she gets the hives when people suggest first-person stories.

1 Street of Broken Dreams

John Gittelsohn and Ronald Campbell of The Orange County Register

Gittelsohn and Campbell bring the subprime debacle to the proverbial “neighborhood near you” with a close-up look at one street where they found lenders preying on Hispanic buyers to the tune of $19 million in loans. This story crunches lots of numbers; it’s not a sob story about the homeowners some of whom maybe should have known better before taking out their loans. But the story goes a long way toward explaining how so many Americans – homeowners and lenders got into so much trouble.

 

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Copyright © 2008 Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism