Localizing Madoff

By Kelly Carr
February 6, 2009 05:16 PM

The unraveling of Bernard Madoff has captivated headlines.

Since Madoff’s $50-billion Ponzi scheme was discovered, reporters outside of New York were looking for a way to localize this international story.

This week, a 162-page document that lists names of clients who invested money with Madoff was released as part of a Federal Bankruptcy Court filing. The list exposes thousands of Madoff’s clients from around the globe, investors from Rockville, Md. to Paris, France, giving reporters solid information to localize the story.

When John Gittelsohn, a business reporter for the Orange County Register, heard about the document, he knew it was the opportunity he’d been waiting for. Since the Madoff scandal broke, the veteran business reporter had been trying to understand how the story affected the residents he covered.

Inside the 162 pages, he found 33 Orange County accounts and this reporting later led to conversations with residents in his coverage area who had entrusted Madoff with their money.

A story on the Register’s Web site introduced readers to Martin Miller, a 96-year-old Orange County resident who lost $3.5 million. At the end of the story, readers also had the chance to click through a PDF of the Madoff investor list.

“This is one of those things that anyone can do,” Gittelsohn said. “You never know who will turn up on the list, maybe it’s a local charity or a prominent individual or a bunch of people living in a retirement community.”

Many of the country’s top news organizations have already jumped on the story. The Wall Street Journal has a separate page devoted to Madoff’s victims, which offers a look at investors who lost the most and areas of the country where the ponzi scheme hit the hardest. The New York Times offers readers an interactive database that allows visitors to sort through the document and located victims in a specific area.

But now it’s time for mid-size and smaller media outlets to begin to make sense of how the Madoff scandal trickles down into their communities. This document offers the perfect launching point.

As you sift through the pages, just keep in mind that the names on the list could represent actual investors, but also people who set up an account on someone’s behalf. The New York Times also pointed out that some people have said their names were put on the list through an error.

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Copyright © 2009 Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism