“Borrowers Betrayed” by Jack Dolan, Matthew Haggman and Rob Barry of The Miami Herald received the top gold award of $5,000.

A nine-month investigation and resulting series uncovered poor oversight by Florida mortgage regulators that permitted thousands of individuals with criminal records to conduct business in the state’s home loan industry. Starting with the tragic case of a single mother who lost her home because of a crooked broker, the Herald expanded its probe to ultimately topple one of Florida’s most powerful commissioners.

“The Herald really nailed this investigation, uncovering a unique angle on the theme of the year,” the judges said in their assessment of the work. “It found a staggering degree of nonfeasance on the part of the state, bringing perpetrators to life and showing the human impact of misdeeds.”

For more details on the series and to get tips from the reporters to improve your investigative coverage, check out this recent blog from our Rosland Gammon.

“AARP’s Stealth Fees” by Gary Cohn and Darrell Preston of Bloomberg Markets received the silver award of $2,000.

Through public documents and scores of interviews, reporters found that the world’s largest organization for seniors collects hundreds of millions of dollars annually from insurers who pay for AARP’s endorsement of their policies. The insurance companies build this cost into premiums they charge AARP members. AARP sometimes also holds client insurance premiums as long as a month and invests the money, the reporters found.

“Beginning with a complaint by an individual AARP member, Bloomberg Markets goes on to surprise the reader with a number of revelations about an organization whose conduct and organizational lifestyle had previously been taken for granted,” the judges said.

• ABA Journal for “The Curious Case of Alex Latifi” by Lynda Edwards;

• The Seattle Times for “Culture of Resistance” by Michael Berens and Ken Armstrong;

• The Wall Street Journal for “USA Inc.” (part 1, part 2, part 3, and part 4) by Dan Fitzpatrick, Susanne Craig, Deborah Solomon, Kate Kelly, Jon Hilsenrath, Susan Pulliam and Tom McGinty.

“In a difficult year for the media, we were delighted to receive hard-hitting stories with surprising revelations about business in its many forms,” said Andrew Leckey, president of the Reynolds Center, which funds the awards. “The heart of the investigative journalist beats loudly in these well-researched, forcefully presented stories, and we commend both the publications and the journalists.”

The Barlett & Steele Awards, named for the famed investigative team of Donald Barlett and James Steele, were first conferred in the fall of 2007 to celebrate the best in print and online investigative business journalism. Awards will be conferred at a ceremony to be held Jan. 6, 2010, during “Reynolds Business Journalism Week” at the Cronkite School.

To learn more about past winners vist "Barlett & Steele: Behind the Awards."

And check out these videos from last year's Barlett & Steele Awards:

• Barlett, Steele and winners of the 2008 awards discuss their series and investigative reporting methods in a panel discussion at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. Click here to watch.
• BusinessWeek’s Robert Berner and Brian Grow share the details behind their series, “Prisoners of Debt,” the first-place winner of the awards in 2008.
• David Heath, a reporter at The Seattle Times, discusses his runner-up project about congressional earmarks dubbed “The Favor Factor.” 

For further information, contact: Andrew Leckey, president, Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism, 602-496-9186 or andrew.leckey@businessjournalism.org.

Seasoned real estate reporters rely on a variety of databases and sites to keep focused on sales, foreclosure and delinquency rates for better coverage on the beat. These new sources also can serve as a predictor of when local markets could improve.

Shifting Sources

With the proliferation of information on the Internet, some business journalists have found themselves searching for a new Rolodex of sources that are proficient in explaining the ins and outs of housing foreclosures, mortgages and delinquencies and distressed properties such as short sales.

“The first thing you’ve got to have is the broadest toolbox possible,” said Jon Lansner an OC Register business columnist and real estate blogger.

Lansner, who has been with the California paper for more than 20 years, said that a key element of covering today’s residential real estate market is to be open to reporting information from a variety of databases because no one database is perfect.

“The real estate market has changed,” he said. “In the old days it (sourcing) was a real estate agent and then one analyst.” But now with Web sites like Zillow.com, he said real estate coverage is becoming more like the stock market, where stories use information from the various exchanges to report the full story for each day.

“There’s nothing wrong with reporting four different opinions in the market,” said Lansner. Since the market is confusing at this stage, coverage should be broader so readers can get a flavor of the full climate of the real estate market in their area so they can make educated decisions, he said.

For Jamie Smith Hopkins, regional economy reporter for the Baltimore Sun, covering the drop in the housing market in Maryland has been similar to tackling the market upswing just a few years ago. One change - she's relying more on delinquency and foreclosure rates than before.

Data Crunching

No matter what trend the real estate market is experiencing, comprehensive data is key element for solid housing stories.

Smith Hopkins said there are a lot of sources for data, but reporters have to be careful of companies they are retrieving information from because some are not as reliable as others. The best way to verify the figures is to compare them with research from other sources like public records or auctioneers in your community, she said.

Gerri Willis, personal finance editor for CNN Business News and host of CNN's "Your Bottom Line” says that although the beat has gone from covering a huge expansion to a huge contraction, reporters still have to “look into those sources that have sophisticated data.” She recommends paying attention to home prices and Web sites like Moody’s Economy.com and the National Association of Realtors’ Web site for strong data on the trends of the market.

Also for improved coverage, Willis suggests reading trade publications to keep your brain sharp on the industry’s language and seeking out residents impacted by the housing slump in your community for a local snapshot.

Smith Hopkins said to look at sites like the Federal Housing Finance Agency , the revamped Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight Web site for housing stats that “try to compare home sales apples to apples, comparing a house sold to that same house sold previously” for their data. Other web resources include the Metropolitan Regional Information System, which is the largest MLS is the nation. And the Mortgage Bankers Association that tracks state delinquency rates quarterly.

Noticing the Next Boom

Speculation that the national market is trending upward increases the pressure for reporters trying to gauge the progress of their community's housing market.

Dow Jones real estate reporter, Dawn Wotapka said to look for local price stabilization, and sale increases as beginning signs of a turnaround in your local area. Also, keeping up to speed on the progress of new home construction is another good indicator of an upswing in the climate of your coverage area.

According to some, sales may be one of the best indicators of market strength.

Smith Hopkins said keeping an eye on sales and not just prices will be a preliminary indicator of an upswing in your market. Due to an increase or decrease in the demand, a movement in sales will trigger a respective shift in prices.

Monitoring foreclosure rates is another indicator of the climate.

Finding what percentage of sales are short sales and foreclosures on your beat is another good way to chart real estate activity in your area. “If fewer are distressed properties then foreclosures may be clearing out,” Smith Hopkins said.

Also observing the delinquency rates can help gauge what is to come.

“It is important because not all of them are foreclosures yet,” Smith Hopkins said. But since owners of those properties are behind on their home payments, the properties could still end up going back to the bank. Watch those statistics because they can serve as a good predictor of what is on the horizon for your community’s housing market.

Need more data on real estate activity in your community? Check out the following Web sites that reporters on the beat find helpful:

• Zillow: www.zillow.com


• Trulia: www.trulia.com


• RealtyTrac: www.realtytrac.com


• Builder Online: www.builderonline.com


• National Association of Realtors: www.realtor.org


• Federal Housing Finance Agency: www.fhfa.org


• Metropolitan Regional Information System: www.mris.com


• Mortgage Bankers Association: www.mbaa.org


• Moody's Analytics: www.economy.com

1) Consider the pros and cons. Freelancing isn’t for everyone. The pace of assignments — and therefore pay — can be erratic. Being your own boss requires discipline. And you have to toil to get clients. That said, freelancing can pay well, especially corporate work. The variety of assignments keeps things interesting. And for most jobs, you can work from anywhere.

2) Do some soul searching. Why are you freelancing? Is this a temporary solution while you wait for the next journalism job? A stepping stone to public relations? Or is freelancing a long-term career move? Caroline Wilbert, a friend, former AJC colleague and full-time freelancer, advises deliberating on whether you want to do pure journalism, corporate work or a hybrid of the two: “It’s definitely possible to have a hybrid, but ethical issues must be navigated with care.”

3) You’re a business, operate like one. After deciding to become a full-time freelancer, I formed an “S” corporation to save on taxes and limit my liability. Some freelancing peers operate under limited liability corporations. The U.S. Small Business Administration Web site explains different business structures. Once you’ve incorporated, open a business bank account under your tax ID number. Be diligent about keeping your business and personal finances separate. Come tax time, you’ll be very glad you did.

4) Speaking of taxes, deduct, deduct, deduct. You can give yourself workplace benefits by deducting certain health care expenses and opening a simplified employee pension plan, or SEP, which offers some tax advantages. Keep track of your work-related expenses such as computers, Internet service, mileage and even your electric bill, if you have a home office. The Internal Revenue Service < a href="http://www.irs.gov/retirement/article/0,,id=111419,00.html#1" target="blank">Web site is a great resource for what is deductible and how to keep records. But it’s best to avoid expenses, whenever possible. Every penny is yours, so keep it if you can.

5) You’re a business, act like one. Turn in clean copy, at the required length, and meet your deadlines. Be available during business hours. Don’t let the dog bark through your interviews. Keep an updated résumé, list of references and work samples handy. Ditch the jeans when you meet clients for lunch. Freelancing is your job; do it well.

6) Your talent has a price tag. When I started this business (ad)venture, Caroline gave me some treasured advice: Your time and talent is valuable, figure out what it’s worth. I have a standard per-word and hourly rate, which I set after talking to several freelancers in my area. Stick to your rate unless the client is offering long-term or repeat assignments. “When we work in a big newspaper or other media outlet … we start to think of writing as a commonplace skill,” Caroline says. “In the real world, it is not, and what we do has real monetary worth.” It may be hard to say no to a job, especially if you are just getting started, but working for a sub-par rate will haunt you.

7) Aim for efficient edits. All newsroom journalists have a tale of an epic and demoralizing edit. When you’re a freelance writer, the time you spend rewriting to fit an editor’s concept of the story not only drains your ego, but also your pocketbook. Ask for a thorough description of the assignment — in writing, if possible. If you get specs over the phone, follow up with an e-mail describing your planned approach. Once you’ve done some reporting, send a story outline. Editors often use freelancers to fill specific needs; they know what they want, and they want you to deliver it in a certain way. Save yourself time, money and frustration by getting a clear idea of the editor’s vision on the front end.

8) Protect your reputation. Some of the old mores — like the idea that doing PR work forever excludes you from journalism — no longer apply. But, as Caroline advises above, it’s important to stay true to your ethical standards. Make sure you and your clients understand the distinction between reporting and PR assignments. Always represent yourself to sources as a freelancer working on behalf of a publication, rather than as an employee. Don’t try to parlay an interview for one client into a job for another. If a contract specifies that you are not to resell the work for which a client has paid you, keep your end of the bargain.

9) Network with other freelancers. Take advantage of the experience gained by others, and share what you’ve learned about everything from keeping up with invoices to writing winning story proposals. Cultivate a group of fellow freelancers you can go to for tough-love story critiques. If a job is too big for one freelancer, recommend a colleague be added to the team — and ask that they do the same for you.

10) One word: Hustle. In the newsroom, you may have been fed enough story assignments to cause indigestion, but expect to hunt for every freelancing morsel. Make sure former colleagues and sources know you are freelancing. (Start by getting your name on Gorkana’s Friday jobs e-mail, www.gorkana.com, and SABEW’s freelance list.) Contact people who might hire or recommend you. If you were a beat reporter, get in touch with trade publications serving that industry and with decision-makers from businesses or government agencies in that sector. Expect to be ignored until you are needed, and don’t be afraid to (politely) nag. And always, always thank people who help you.

At their best, analysts are accessible, strategically insightful, expert number crunchers and secure in speaking their minds.  At their worst, they know only what management tells them or color the truth to protect their firms or relationships with the companies they cover. That is, if they talk to you at all.

Some journalists still see analysts as a security blanket, especially for younger reporters or those new to a beat. Others prefer that reporters become their own analysts.

Either way, journalists need to understand how analysts think and operate in order to judge their value and credibility as sources.

Rex Henderson has been on both sides of the relationship. He spent nearly 20 years as a reporter, most of them covering business for The Tampa Tribune, before joining investment firm Raymond James & Associates as an analyst nine years ago.

“An analyst’s principal audience is institutional investors,’ Henderson says. “So an analyst is most likely to talk to national publications or wire services where his name could appear before an institutional client base.”

Henderson speaks regularly with about a half-dozen reporters who cover his industries - auto retailers and other “hard” consumer goods - but he is careful about what he says.  “The upside for analysts in talking to reporters is minimal. The downside, if you’re misquoted, is immense,” he said.

Earlier this decade, investigations of Wall Street business practices revealed that some analysts recommended certain stocks publicly while privately calling them “crap” or worse. Why? To help their firms get those companies’ lucrative investment banking business.

The scandal led to new rules designed to weed out conflicts of interests, make analysis more independent, and assure that all investors received the same information about companies at the same time.

These rules have made communications more fair and honest, but at a cost to the reporter-analyst relationship. Analysts are generally required to get permission from their “compliance” departments before consenting to an interview. Many won’t go to that trouble. Similarly, brokerage firms that used to distribute analysts’ reports to journalists free for the asking will no longer release them at all.

With companies’ conference calls with analysts now open to the public, a result of the Wall Street reforms, many reporters don’t need analysts the way they once did, says Ted Reed, who covers airlines for TheStreet.com. But he adds that the best analysts provide valuable help in dissecting financial statements and providing strategic insight.

Even Fortune magazine’s Allan Sloan, who acerbically refers to them as “anal-ysts,” says he uses them occasionally.

“The important thing is to treat them the way you would treat any other source. You can’t build a story around them,” Sloan says.

“People used to treat analysts as some kind of living gods, and they’re not. You have to develop a relationship with them and figure out if they’re trustworthy.”

How do you do that? Here are some things to consider:

• How often does the analyst publish reports on the company you’re writing about? That information is easily accessible on Bloomberg, among other sources. If an analyst hasn’t done a report in the past six months, how can their information be up to date and reliable?

• How much time does the analyst spend looking at any given company? Several years ago, a reporter discovered that one widely quoted analyst claimed to follow more than 1,000 companies. Nobody can do that, of course. On the other hand, they need to cover enough companies to know their industry.

• How much real analysis is the analyst doing? Is he or she just relaying what management says, or do they talk to other sources and independently dissect the numbers and strategy? Do they ask tough questions on conference calls even if management doesn’t like it? Or do they congratulate managers on last quarter’s performance and seem to just be trying to fill in financial details for predetermined conclusions?

• Are you calling an analyst to quote him or her on something you already know? If so, why not just say it yourself?

• Look for analysts at smaller regional firms rather than on Wall Street. These analysts are more likely to return phone calls, particularly from reporters from small or lesser-known publications. And they often they are some of the best in their business.

• Consider using credit rating firms, industry consultants, or “buy-side” analysts – those who work for a mutual fund company or other institutional investors – instead of brokerage (i.e. “sell-side”) analysts. “The credit analysts have really stepped into the gap, particularly S&P and Moody’s,” Reed says. “While you’d like to have them you don’t need the major market houses’ analysts more. The credit analysts will talk to the smaller papers and put you on their lists.”

We asked a number of business reporters to talk about analysts they respect. None mentioned one currently working on Wall Street. A few examples:

Rick Rothacker, banking reporter, The Charlotte Observer: Nancy Bush, NAB Research. “She is a longtime independent analyst so she has institutional knowledge, an informed opinion and there's not a lot of hoops to jump through to get her on the phone. “

Reed:  Robert McAdoo, Avondale Partners in Nashville. “Reporters are pretty smart, but they may not know how to look at the numbers to see something like whether a particular flight is profitable. He knows how to do that. He has great sources, and he’s the type of analyst who goes the extra step.”

Sloan:  Cecile Gondor, Herzfeld Advisors in Miami.  Outstanding written analysis and depth of understanding in her niche, closed-end funds.

Hanah Cho, mutual funds reporter, The Baltimore Sun:  Greggory (CQ) Warren, Morningstar Inc.  “He returns your phone calls and he’s knows what I’m calling about before I even tell him.”

Do you have a go-to analyst? To add to the list, e-mail your suggestion to kelly.carr@businessjournalism.org. With your help, we can create a comprehensive source list for business journalists.

You can also use Facebook Connect to comment

Why should you and your audience care about a dry-as-a-bone industry index? The National Association of Home Builders polls its members about what level of demand they expect in the near future for new houses. The results of the survey – formally known as the NAHB/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index - are considered a harbinger for the overall residential real-estate market and the ripple outward toward consumers, lenders and suppliers – not to mention appliance dealers, furniture stores, painters and other businesses that serve home builders and buyers.

In short, most of us. Any story that addresses the precarious local housing scene and its effect on just about everyone’s fortunes will grip your readers’ attention. With a little digging, you’ll find myriad options for localizing and adding color to an otherwise abstract report.

First, visit the NAHB newsroom and sign up for their e-mail delivery, so you’ll get future releases automatically. Familiarize yourself with the methodology and historical results of the poll; you’ll notice the dramatic dip into single digits late in 2008 and early this year; a five-year look-back would make an eye-catching graphic, or you might just add a link to this chart with your story.

Then delve into the impact on your audience. On the NAHB site, locate the state-by state list of local builders’ associations. Click on the URLs for local sites and you'll get a member directory or search engine leading you not only to area builders but to industry trades and suppliers, from masonry experts to architects to electrical contractors. All of these small- and medium-sized businesses have a housing-related story to tell. And since most are privately owned, they’re not under the corporate constraints of large and publicly traded developers – meaning you're apt to get more candid comments and even access to workers, job sites and dynamic photo/video possibilities.

Layer those anecdotes with specific data - in prose or in graphic form - about housing permits issued in your region. County governments often can provide recent stats; otherwise check out the U.S. Census’ Building Permits report - which is current through May right down to the county level for many major U.S. markets.

The NAHB also has subsets of data you can tap for quirky angles, depending on your audience demographic. For example, the 55+Housing Market Index (55+HMI) measures developments aimed at mature buyers and retirees – helpful info if you’re in snowbird territory.

Another go-to residential real-estate resource you should bookmark: The National Association of Realtors; this trade-group site offers statistics, analysts and assistance with local contacts. They’ll be releasing their monthly existing home sales report on July 23.

It’s nearly impossible to overestimate your readers’ interest in home sales trends and real-estate values. In an era of dwindling equity, a tidal wave of foreclosures and a glut of new construction, the fallow housing market still is fertile ground for enterprising reporters.

Visit Your Daily Tipsheet each morning for advice on where to find sources, background and creative ways to make financial news and trends relevant to your audience.

Like miner’s canaries, the trials of minority communities and businesses can shed light on the vulnerabilities that imperil us all. In retrospect, it’s clear that the predatory mortgage lending that disproportionately victimized minorities wasn’t an isolated strand but an integral thread in the fabric of the global economy. Risky mortgages, we learned belatedly, had been repackaged into a dizzying array of asset-backed securities and sold the world over so that when subprime borrowers hit snags Wall Street titans unraveled soon after.

I’m not suggesting, as some pundits have, that minorities caused the credit crisis. But rather that in-depth reporting on minority business and finance and their ties to the broader economy can help expose marauding executives, deceptive marketing and lax regulation.

It can also provide fresh insights into business as usual. For example, each June Black Enterprise magazine presents a microcosm of U.S. commerce—the good and the bad—in its annual report on the fortunes of the largest black-owned businesses.The 2009 list reveals carnage among black-owned auto dealers as well as the inspiring rebirth of a back-office services provider as an IPO-poised pharmaceutical manufacturer.

Even in the absence of credit meltdowns, corporate scandals and economic recession, the sheer numbers of minority businesses and buying power of blacks, Latinos and Asians points to the increasing influence they wield and the need for deliberate coverage of them. There are 4.1 million minority-owned firms in the U.S. They account for $668 billion in annual revenue and employ nearly 5 million people, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce. Minority-owned enterprises are also starting up at a faster rate than other companies, which makes them important sources for stories on both job creation and innovation.

Moreover, to ignore minority business is to discount a growing segment of your potential readership. The U.S. Census Bureau predicts that non-whites will be the majority by 2042. Already, one in ten U.S. counties have a population that is more than 50 percent ethnic and racial minority.

Most minority businesses are small and privately held, which means reporters usually aren’t privy to their finances with the frequency or regularity we get from public companies. But some are required to file SEC documents if they were recently taken private or took on debt and buyers required disclosure. Other valuable numbers can be gleaned from the secretary of state’s office, occupational licensing boards, trade associations, county records, health and safety boards, WARN Act filings with the Department of Labor and court proceedings. (For more details, see Chris Roush’s Covering Private Companies).

But numbers without the human element, sophisticated analysis and an eye toward the public interest are insufficient. For this, nothing beats boots on the ground. Fortunately, the diverse voices of experts and laymen that you need are just a call, drive or click away.

Meet minority business owners at networking events held by local affiliates of organizations like the National Black Chamber of Commerce, the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, the National Urban League and the National Minority Supplier Development Council. Find out what they do, the challenges they face, the successes they’ve had and their perceptions of the local business climate.

Check with procurement departments of large enterprises in your area to find minority suppliers. Big companies often are eager to tout their partnerships with minority-owned businesses. Moreover, they can provide insight into the health of minority-owned businesses in the area and their fitness to source materials and services on a large scale.

Follow public policy debates to get familiar with issues that may affect your coverage. Think tanks like the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, which studies legislation related to black workforce development, asset-building, retirement security, affordable housing and more, are great resources. As are the Congressional Hispanic, Black, and Asian Pacific American caucuses, also known as the Tri-Caucus. They can also refer you to local stakeholders.

Finally, don’t overlook the wisdom of your peers. Build relationships with minority journalists to find out some of the business trends they are observing or covering. Organizations such as the Maynard Institute, UNITY: Journalists of Color, National Association of Black Journalists, National Association of Hispanic Journalists, Asian American Journalists Association, and Native American Journalists Association promote the balanced coverage of minority communities.

The Society of Professional Journalists even has a Rainbow Diversity Sourcebook. Search it to find American Indian, Arab American, Asian American/Pacific Islander, African American, Hispanic and South Asian experts in business, consumer issues, economics, labor issues and trade.

Duties include: The Web developer will research and propose a new content management system for businessjournalism.org and transition the site to that system. This position will develop a Web-based registration system for regional and online workshops; will devise creative solutions to deliver just-in-time and scheduled training online, including using podcasts, chats, live and archived video, and real-time meeting software; will be encouraged to develop games and/or other interactive methods to engage and teach journalists how to better cover business. Also, this individual will use social-networking tools to help business journalists connect and share their knowledge through discussion boards, virtual mentoring, user ratings and other ways. This position will be expected to produce results in a fast-moving and challenging environment, creating new training solutions, developing prototypes and experimenting with untested training methodologies on current (Web, iPhone, Google G1, BlackBerry, etc.) and future platforms. The Web developer will be encouraged and expected to produce elegant solutions by thinking creatively.

Minimum Requirements: At least four years’ experience in Web development; expertise in a variety of programming languages; bachelor’s degree in related field.

Desired Qualifications: Experience in e-learning and knowledge of programming languages such as Apache, Nginx, HTML, XML, JSON, YAML, JavaScript, CSS, ColdFusion, Ruby on Rails/Ruby, Django/Python, Drupal-Joomla/PHP, Adobe Flash, Adobe Flex, Adobe Air, Postgresql, SQL Server and MySQL. Applicants should have an understanding of emerging technology trends and be on top of their area of specialty.

For more information: visit http://www.asu.edu/hr/applicant.html and apply to job number 22732.

“Your Daily Tipsheet” will help business journalists get ready for tomorrow’s business news story today with daily posts from Melissa Preddy, a business writer, editor and columnist for The Detroit News from 1995 to 2008. Preddy will provide links, tips and ideas on how to get ahead of the news, breathe fresh life into perennial business stories and localize national trends and events. She will pay special attention to the preparation necessary for good storytelling, whether in print, online or broadcast.

“I really want this blog to be a conversation with business journalists," Preddy said. "Our aim is to provide go-to practical resources on a daily basis, and I welcome questions, suggestions and ideas on topics the blog should tackle."

To contact Preddy, please e-mail mpreddy@aol.com.

“Make It Great!” will dissect one stellar example of business journalism each weekday and offer an actionable tip to help journalists replicate what made the story great. Blogger Rosland Gammon is a former business reporter for The Philadelphia Inquirer and Bloomberg News who now teaches at Marquette University and Alverno College.

To recommend a story for recognition in “Make It Great!” please e-mail rbgammon@rbgmedia.com.

You can follow new posts to both blogs on Twitter and Facebook.

EMMA is a search engine for municipal bonds the way EDGAR is for public companies. Through the site, you can search for official statements, munis, disclosure information for 529 college savings plans, and other municipal securities issued since 1990.

We talked with Ernesto Lanza, general counsel for MSRB, for more details on EMMA, which will officially launch July 1.

Q: What was the thought process behind creating EMMA?

A: EMMA started out from a pretty narrow perspective in that we wanted to move the disclosure practices in municipal securities market, which has for years and years and years been very paper-based, based on moving papers from here to there, and having documents available only to a narrow group of people i.e. the actual investors in securities.

We wanted to move it into at least the 20th century, if not the 21st century, where we could have electronic communication, immediate access by investors to documents, and to really cut the connection with the need to move so much paper around and the associated time and money with doing that.

Q: Can you talk about the education section?

A:  There’s some baseline information so you can understand what is a bond, how does it work, what are the different types of bonds out in the marketplace, how are they sold, how are they bought.

There have been some types of securities that have made the headlines in the last couple years like auction rate securities, there’s a section talking about that. There’s a section talking about variable rate demand obligations, which are other securities that up until recently have been primarily institutional investments but more and more independent investors have gotten into.

There’s a glossary of terms, which is the most comprehensive there is for the muni marketplace. There’s frequently asked questions that walk you through the types of information on the Web site to explain what that information is useful for.

If you read through the whole thing, you’ll get a very good sense of the marketplace...the goal here is to provide even-handed information that gives people a good background so they’ll understand the information they’re reading.

Q: Why do you think disclosure and transparency in the municipal securities market is important?

A: Unlike a car, where you can look at it and get in the car and drive it around and see if it performs to your liking or disliking, securities are things that exist in concept.

So to understand what it is that you’re going to put your money into and how it’s going to perform you need to understand the terms of securities, you have to understand something about the issuer, whether they’re going to be good to pay up when the time comes, you have to understand when it’s time for you to sell your bond or get it redeemed how that process work.

Over the life of the time you’re holding the bonds, you want to know if that issuer is continuing to perform the way they have…it’s just key to understand the value of your holdings.

Q: Why did MSRB tailor EMMA for non-professional investors?

A: “The reality is most of the information here has been available in some form or another to professionals; broker dealers, mutual funds, other institutional investors have been able to get a lot of this information through proprietary information vendors, through subscription or otherwise.

It’s a pretty expensive proposition that makes sense to the professionals that use it day in, day out in their business, but a lot of this information has been extremely difficult for individual mom-and-pop vendors or small institutions to get a hold of at a reasonable cost.

So the goal was to build this site as a place where those folks can come to and get this information for free and have it organized in a way that would make sense to them, that would give them all the information about a particular security in one spot, that would provide them with an education center that explains why this particular document is important, what they should look for in these documents, give them links other site like other regulators…and put it all in one place so they can understand what these documents are trying to tell them. Because they’re long documents, they’re complicated documents…you want to explain to people why it is you should bother to read these things and if you don’t have all the time in the world what pieces are important for you to look at.

Q: What kind of details can EMMA users find on the financial condition of bond issuers:

A: You get some information when the bonds are first issued and you get some information down the road years afterwards. Some of the information you’re going to be able to find are things like audited financial statements of the issuer, often times going several years as well.

Depending on the particular reason for the issuance of bonds, you may get information about the operation of a particular project. Let’s say for example you were looking at a county’s water and sewer system, it will provide a significant amount of information about the operations of that system and the metrics around that operation and some textual description of the system. It might describe future development plans, future plans for issuance of new bonds.

For general governmental bonds, like if a state wants to issue bonds to build lots of roads and office buildings and stuff like that, you’ll often times get some very general information about the state. You might have discussions of the top ten 10 or top 50 or top 100 tax payers, you might have a list of the biggest businesses, you might get a sense of new businesses coming into town, you might get basic economic information like unemployment information. You’ll have the breakdown of basic government expenditures and revenues. It really is across the board.

Q: Do you think this site will create greater accountability of bond issuers?

A: Issuers have always, we believe or hope, felt accountability to their bond holders in terms of meeting their obligation to pay in the bonds and to meet the terms of the bonds and to provide basic disclosure.

The sunshine of this Web site and the fact that you see things side by side will provide a lot more emphasis for those issuers who haven’t been quite as activist or quite as energetic in their disclosure to look and see what other issuers of their type are doing and to see where they can improve, where they can be more timely, where they can give more complete information. So I think there will be a significant force to move disclosure to be more and more in depth and more and more timely over time.

I think issuers are aware that this is a very public venue, that before, the documents were technically public but were not that easy to get a hold of and now they’re extraordinarily easy to a hold of, and so they realize they’re being watched very closely by anyone anywhere.

EMMA Highlights:

• A comprehensive education section explaining municipal securities, how to read securities documents, the risks of the investments and more.


• A glossary of municipal security terms.


• Frequently Ask Questions on how to use EMMA, features of municipal securities, how to read documents related to the securities and other information.


• A section of related links full of more informational and educational resources.


• A search engine for munis and 529 plans and an advanced search where you can look up the official statements by CUSIP, issuer name, issue Description/Obligor, or state.


• Official statements of muni securities detailing the terms of the munis and the projects they fund.


• Continuing disclosure statements showing the financial condition of the issuer as it changes over time.


• A section showing real-time and past muni bond trading.


• Daily trade summary by trade type.

Other coverage of the EMMA launch:

Meet Emma
MSRB Begins All-Electronic Municipal Bond Disclosure
EMMA: Electronic Municipal Market Access is Launched Today
MSRB readies new muni disclosure system

One day in the not-too-distant future, I suspect children of the next generation will snicker at the notion that newspapers were actually delivered to your front door. What a task-intensive idea: Somebody hauling a stack of inky newspapers door to door all over town. How quaint, the children will laugh.

Yet there’s not much to laugh about the state of the news media now.

Little did I appreciate the coming industry troubles when I left The Washington Post as an investigative business reporter a year ago to become a journalism professor at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. I made the move out of a love of teaching, not because I could divine the tectonic changes the business is undergoing now.

But from my academic perch, I have seen the shell-shocked faces of graduate students in my investigative reporting class and undergraduates in my business reporting class as they begin the daunting prospect of looking for work. What many have found is they are graduating into joblessness. Some are seeking a job that doesn’t exist as we know it. Others don’t know what they will do. Still others don’t know where they will go.

I call them the “Lost Generation.”

Not because they’re disillusioned like Hemingway and Fitzgerald after World War I. Lost—because they’re facing the worst economy since the Great Depression. Newspapers are collapsing. Magazines are hemorrhaging. Business sections are disappearing. Investigative reporting, because of the high cost of doing it, is moving to nonprofits, if not shrinking.

Lost—because so many young journalists are entering the labor market as the unemployment rate hits 9.4 percent, the highest in more than a quarter century. Lost—because these college grads are competing for jobs with laid off people their parents’ age. Lost—because it’s tough now to get even some unpaid internships. Lost—because it’s not just the field of journalism that’s struggling. It’s Wall Street, where investment banking is suddenly a thing of the past. It’s the auto industry, what’s left of it. It’s everywhere.

These college grads are also known as part of the Millennial Generation: An indulgent, coddled lot (about 70 million of them), if you take the word of stuffy adults who have forgotten what it’s like to be young. Born between about 1980 and 2000, these millennials are tagged as idealistic, in need of instant gratification, accustomed to texting, Facebook poking and other social networking on the Web.

Yet if this generation suffers from an entitlement complex, they will also have to be resourceful; after all, where will the next generation of journalists go? What will happen to those who want to go into business and investigative reporting—perhaps two of the hardest hit areas?

The industry is changing so rapidly now that it’s too early to tell how it will coalesce, but already there are signs: Some journalists have figured out how to make a living from blogging. Others are creating nonprofits to delve into investigative reporting. And then there are those who are becoming freelancers—journalists as entrepreneurs—a brand unto themselves.

At a recent gathering of prospective students visiting Medill, a parent asked me the question of the moment: Does it make sense for him to send his child to a journalism school when the industry is in disarray?

To which I said: a resounding yes.

Innovation, lest we forget, is often born in times of distress. I also reminded the parent, there is more information available today than ever before—largely thanks to the Internet—so it’s not as if people are no longer interested in the news. On the contrary, we get news almost as soon as it happens: on our Blackberries, through our computers, wirelessly, invisibly.

But beyond that, I told the parent—and scores of prospective students in attendance—that one of the dirty little secrets of real life is that roughly nine of ten people I know hate their jobs, and the key is to not become one of them. You will bump into them years after college, and you’ll wonder what happened. Why aren’t they changing the world as they had dreamed? Where did the idealism go? What happened to the fire in their eyes?

I’m one of the lucky ones. I love what I do, teaching and writing. And I reminded the prospective students—and I say it here—that for all the economic strife today, we should not compromise our dreams, even if the road looks hard. Not many other professions can say what journalism can: that it is so important that the founding fathers of this nation protected it in the Constitution. That in journalism, you can make a difference. And that remains as true as ever.

Alec Klein is a bestselling author, award-winning investigative business reporter former of The Washington Post and now professor of journalism at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.

Veteran business reporters are familiar with navigating the challenges of the beat and understand what it’s like to start from scratch. Bend their ear and learn their secret tips and mistakes. Soon enough you too will cover business with authority.

Here are some tips from top business reporters to get you started:

Conquer your number fears

Journalists have long been stereotyped as number-phobic. Admitting what you don’t know and then passionately educating yourself can conquer numeric fears. Diana Henriques, a veteran financial investigative reporter for The New York Times, believes that journalists in every beat should embrace numbers to enhance their reporting.

“Just get over it,” Henriques said. “I think what holds more business journalists back more than any other thing is this reluctance to demand a mastery of numbers. A willingness to tackle numbers is, in most newsrooms, what distinguishes the business reporters from everybody else.

“Every reporter ought to be able to manage the world of numbers, they ought to be numerate and have some literacy in basic finance…you’re just shooting yourself in the foot if you don’t just get over this notion that you do words, not numbers.”

Henriques encourages new business reporters to take an introductory accounting class or business workshops. The Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism offers tutorials like Using Numbers Effectively and seminars like Understanding Financial Statements to endow budding biz reporters with confidence. The Center for Investigative Reporting also offers resources online to help you in mastering sourcing and basic reporting tactics.

Or pack in some extra reading. Try “Math Tools for Journalists” by Kathleen Woodruff Wickham as a refresher for basic math you’ve gotten rusty or check out this article on the ten things every reporter should know covering the business beat.

For an overall primer, the Federal Reserve also offers an educational Web site outlining the basics of the Fed, economics and finance.

Admit you’re a newbie and keep learning

From interviews with chief executives to sorting through unfamiliar language in financial documents, the business beat is packed with intimidating scenarios. Business reporters must fight the daily urge to pretend they know it all.

An ego keeps you from learning, increases your confusion, and threatens your accuracy and credibility.

When you don’t know something, ask, says Jack Gillum, an award-winning business reporter who now works at USA Today. Gillum said that he learned fast that admitting ignorance is often the smartest move.

“I think the biggest mistakes I made weren't necessarily in terms of corrections, but rather in not appreciating the nuance of financial statements or asking people to explain things clearly,” Gillum said in an email. “In business reporting, it's easy to be intimidated by big financial types, but I got the courage to ask even the dumbest of questions. When I started doing that, things went much more smoothly.”

Adam Bell, a business reporter for The Charlotte Observer, said journalists should never stop learning about available reporting tools and information sources.

“Try to take as many different approaches to gaining information on somebody whether it’s researching, going through SEC documents or building a database to track things,” Bell said.

Bell and other expert business journalists encourage reporters to take advantage of public records, company Web sites, LexisNexis, Google Scholar, Yahoo Finance, Investopedia and SEC documents as rich sources for stories. They can also be great educational tools.

Excel and Access are effective tools for database-building and tracking of business data over long periods of time.

Say it simply

Business is notorious for its use of complicated, often obfuscating lingo.

Firmly grasping the concepts behind complex business terms and then relaying that information to readers in a digestible format is essential for business journalists. Breaking down terminology will keep you from becoming a mouthpiece for companies and help provide clarity and context for readers.

Binyamin Appelbaum, a national banking reporter for The Washington Post, said many journalists fail to cut to the heart of what’s being said to the detriment of their reporting.

“People stop short of translating things into English,” Appelbaum said. “As complicated as the stuff that we work with can be, it can all be boiled down to the point where you can understand it…It seems to me that a lot of what goes wrong in business journalism is a function of reporters parroting things that have been said to them rather than understanding what those things actually mean.”

A dictionary of common business language can help you cut through terminology and convey ideas clearly for readers. Veteran reporters recommend these: “Wall Street Words: An A to Z Guide to Investment Terms for Today's Investor” and “The American Heritage Dictionary of Business Terms ” by David L. Scott.

The Washington Post also offers a searchable online business glossary. And AllBusiness.com also has a voluminous online glossary sorted into categories like Insurance, Real Estate and Accounting here.

Learn to read financial statements and find expert readers for accuracy

Financial statements are the cornerstone of businesses reporting and detail the truth behind a company’s annual reports. Understanding how to navigate even the basic elements of a financial statement deepens your reporting and the context of your stories.

Appelbaum urges reporters to find experts and second readers to help check for accuracy in financial calculations and other assumptions.

“Find someone, it doesn’t need to be someone involved in the story, in fact it often shouldn’t be someone involved with the story, to walk through your calculations with and to say to them ‘am I doing this right?’, ‘does this make sense to you?’, ‘if I gave you these raw numbers would you reach the same results I did?’,” he said.

Economic/finance professors at local universities as well as independent accountants and bankers can all be sources to help your understanding of business concepts. Holding informational interviews with these sources is a great way to increase your knowledge of business. Experts can also aid in verifying company data and financial statement calculations.

Check out this list of top business professor blogs. It’s a good resource for sources and story ideas. CNN Money also offers a list of top entrepreneurial professors.

Three thing to keep in mind

Henriques recommends journalists should always remember these three elements when reporting on a business:

• The Risk/Return Ration: The risk/return aka risk/reward ratio states that the greater the risk, the greater the reward and vice versa. There cannot be small risk with great reward, and it can often indicate financial wrongdoing if a company or individual claims to have achieved as much.
• Conflicts of interest
• How the people you are reporting on are getting paid

In November 2008, The Seattle Times moved to end the threat. The Times published a three-part investigation entitled, “Culture of Resistance,” which exposed the abysmal infection control in Washington hospitals and reported a death toll previously hidden from the public.

The reaction in the Washington community was immediate. The series led to an overhaul in the state’s public policy and tightened safety standards in hospitals.

However, the story behind the series did not begin in Seattle. It started when the series’ lead reporter, Michael J. Berens, was an investigative reporter at the Chicago Tribune several years earlier.

Berens had written a number of health care-related stories for the paper and was working on one such story when his phone rang. It was a local woman looking for help getting attention to MRSA or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus.

Jeanine Thomas asked Berens how she could raise public consciousness about the supergerm, which is spread by touch or contact, mainly in health-care facilities because of lack of infection control. Berens, consumed with the story he was looking into at the time, told her the best way was to do it herself.

“I said, ‘From what I have seen in the past, reform typically begins with one person,’” He said.

Thomas, a MRSA victim, heeded his words. She founded the MRSA Survivors Network, a consumer organization. She also shepherded the first law dealing with MRSA through the Illinois legislature. With this under her belt, Thomas contacted Berens again. Berens, now at The Seattle Times, was ready to take on the story.

The Quest Begins

In mid-2007, Thomas provided Berens with background on MRSA. Berens jumped headlong into the project, acquiring a database from the Washington Department of Health, called the Comprehensive Hospital Abstract Reporting System (CHARS). The database included information like: what the patient was diagnosed with, how the patient was treated, and how much it cost.

The database was coded. So after getting “data dictionary,” to read the codes, they plugged the information into Microsoft Access and Excel. Out of the database’s 13,367 diagnosis codes, none accounted for MRSA.

With this, Berens knew the Times were on to something. It was proven that MRSA had been killing people for years, yet CHARS did not indicate it.

Berens and the Times staff found that there was a code indicating whether a patient was diagnosed with an antibiotic-resistant organism. They used the code to find potential MRSA patients. They pared down the numbers even further by eliminating any other germs that even hinted at being something other than MRSA.

The Times applied this formula to the data, year by year. When they were done, they were struck by the figures.

In 1997, the number of admitted patients with MRSA was 141. By 2007, that number had ballooned to 4,723.

The Times also wanted to know how many people died from the supergerm. So they obtained death-certificate data. But again, a problem arose. The certificate data didn’t account for MRSA either.

A Pleasant Surprise

One day, in a stroke of luck, Berens was reading a story in the The Spokesman-Review, which quoted a Department of Health official discussing the number of MRSA-related deaths in Washington. Berens was mystified on where the numbers came from. So he called the department looking for an answer. The department dropped a bomb on him.

It turned out that since 2003, the department kept a separate death-certificate database, which was never disclosed to the public. The database, called “the literals,” included notes written by doctors, going into gritty detail of a person’s death.

At first, the department did not want to hand over the database, saying that the information could be embarrassing for the deceased and their families. But after the Times threatened with legal action, the department relented.

“We explained very clearly that a death certificate is a public record by law,” Berens said. “Just because you type it in a database, doesn’t mean it’s confidential.”

The database turned out to be the “Rosetta stone” for the series, Berens said. The Times exposed that the infection caused 672 deaths, which up to that time had not been revealed.

“The database really painted the picture of what was going on,” he said.

From now on, Berens said if he is covering the government, he makes a Freedom of Information Act request for a list of databases it keeps – just to be sure.

Ken Armstrong, another investigative reporter with the Times, joined the MRSA investigation in the summer of 2008. Ironically, he also worked at the Chicago Tribune at the same time as Berens. But for one reason or another, the pair never worked together.

With an extensive background in legal reporting, Armstrong used his sourcing in the legal world to find any law suits in which MRSA patients were named. He also nailed down interviews with MRSA victims, shading in the human element of the piece.

“One of the biggest challenges was finding patients,” Armstrong said. “We really wanted to illuminate as many aspects of MRSA as we could.”

In one instance, Armstrong had to connect the dots from clues in a 1982 medical journal entry about an unnamed Washington MRSA victim. He linked it to a death certificate, then to the victim’s family.

The hard work paid off. When the story ran in November 2008, the community response was swift. By the series third installment, Washington announced hospitals would have to report any cases linked with MRSA.

Only months later, two bills were signed into law, strengthening infection control and requisite screening for at-risk patients – a test that costs only $20.

The story also picked up a slew of awards. But more importantly, Berens said, is that the series raised the nation’s awareness of MRSA. He encourages reporters to localize the story, so MRSA can be contained even further.

It’s low cost. The databases are free. It just takes a lot of time and hard work, he said.

“If this story shows reporters anything, it’s to challenge conventional wisdom,” Berens said.