Educational Web guide for new business journalists

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press has created

an educational Web guide for journalists new to the business beat. Sunshine Inc.: The Basics of Covering Business Organizations offers a step-by-step introduction to some of the basics of business including:

• How companies are formed and the different structures businesses can take.
  
• How corporate structures work.
• How mergers, layoffs and bankruptcies work.
  
• The different types of company relationships and how they operate, including parent companies, holding companies and shell companies.
  
• The different state requirements for business licensing.
• The different types of business regulators like the Securities and Exchange Commission and their different watchdog functions.

It also suggests some great online business resources including the Electronic Data Gathering Analysis and Retrieval, Yahoo Finance, Hoovers.com and more.

You can read the full guide here.

IMAGE CREDIT: rcfp.org

RTNDA offers new financial reporting section

The Radio-Television News Directors Association is offering a new financial reporting section with story ideas, case studies and resources for reporters. It has everything from story ideas for local scams and foreclosure auctions to how to prepare academics and economists for live television interviews.
One great piece of advice RTNDA gives that journalists don't follow enough is to follow the dominoes. Following the micro ripples of the recession through local communities shows readers that journalists care. It also displays the real human casualties in an economic collapse too often portrayed as nebulous and impersonal.
Visit the site here.

How are you following the dominoes? Comment and tell us how you're tracking the recession in your community.

JobsPage relaunches with eNewsletter

Joe Grimm, the former recruiter for Freep.com, has relaunched JobsPage and created a new eNewsletter to accompany it. The Web site offers "Career Strategies for Journalists" and provides workshops, articles with career advice, journalism job/internship listings, an "Ask the Recruiter" section, and more.
Check out the new site here.

GM bankruptcy resources

The Los Angeles Times has created a list of General Motors Corp. top 20 unsecured creditors with the type and amount of claims each has in G.M., a great resource for reporting how G.M. filing for bankruptcy will affect other organizations. It also has great graphics on the number of union workers at G.M. and G.M.'s global sales by region.
The New York Times also has enlightening multimedia on G.M.'s current predicament, including a timeline graphing G.M.'s history from 1908 to today chronicling its struggles and successes up to the Chapter 11. Its graph contrasting the amount of cars and trucks G.M. has been producing since the 1960s is also very insightful. A NYT map showing the number and locations of jobs the company has cut in the past two years helps show where plants may be closed and jobs may be lost in the aftermath of the bankruptcy filing.
Click here to see the most recent press releases from G.M.

Have other information or resources you'd like us to find for you? Comment and let us know.