Insurance ins and outs

With wildfires searing one coast and tropical storms tossing lightening and hail on the other, insurance company executives must be watching The Weather Channel with the remote in one hand and a box of tissues in the other.

Not a bad time for us to take a look at the insurance industry, which will be paying out its share of claims after the meteorological mayhem dies down.

I’m talking mainly here about hazard and property insurance for businesses and individuals – the type of policies that will be paying out for damages to dwellings, automobiles, personal property, commercial property, crops and other catastrophic losses. And I’m not suggesting that you look for direct correlation between weather woes and the underwriters’ financial performance – in fact according to the Dow Jones Property & Casualty Insurance Index, these stocks have been buoyed along with the rest of the market in recent months.

But if you’ve got a substantial insurer in your backyard, it’s worth checking in and it’s a good opportunity to improve your knowledge of the industry. If you don’t have any large underwriters nearby, it’s still a good idea to familiarize yourself with resources for consumer insurance stories.

Start with state regulators; a shortcut is through the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. It offers a really handy state map that will get you to the insurance oversight board in your state with one or two clicks. In addition to research materials, fact sheets and surveys, many sites offer fraud alerts, legislative updates, rate information, disciplinary action and other information.

Similar resources are available via industry and lobbying organizations.Trade groups include the National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies and the American Insurance Association.

A recent Consumer Reports blog item warns homeowners that their policies may not cover all hurricane damage and the magazine’s September edition also includes an article about dwindling coverage.

Hazard insurance may not be the sexiest topic, but it’s one your readers care about when the wind is licking at the roof and the p.m. commute ends with the sound of crumpling fenders.

Come back to 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.

Labor Day look ahead

Labor Day is a week away, and with jobs – or the lack thereof – as the topic of the year, you’ve barely time to plan and execute a compelling labor package for next weekend.

The fates – and the feds – are cooperating, with the monthly spate of employment reports due out later this week. They include:

• Tuesday: The ADP Employment Report. Produced by the nationwide payroll processor Automatic Data Processing Inc., which claims to pay one out of every six workers in the country, the report is based on ADP’s inside view of the payroll situation among its 500,000 clients. Sign up here for free e-mail releases.

The ADP report is of interest because of its scope and because it distinguishes between the manufacturing and service sectors, and provides a breakdown based on size of business by number of employees.

• Wednesday: U.S. Department of Labor’s productivity report - includes wage and hours-worked data.

• Thursday: U.S. Department of Labor’s weekly initial jobless claims report.

• Friday: The big one: The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ monthly employment situation report. For a review of the data compiled in this monthly roundup, check out my previous tipsheets on the job reports.

Another helpful report just issued: the American Staffing Association’s second-quarter survey, which shows that temporary employment continued to stabilize throughout spring and early summer. Since some analysts believe temporary and contract hiring picks up before the permanent job market does, it’s a handy benchmark to understand.

But those are layering tools; you don’t want to petrify your audience with bare statistics. Some ideas for compelling packages (which also lend themselves to video and animated graphics, as well as print-and-save infoboxes for readers) include:

• Employment forecast Q&A with eight or 12 of your area’s major employers. Don’t forget colleges and universities, health systems, state and local government and nonprofits as well as corporate and small business employers. This makes for a great infographic or other alternative storytelling technique.

• A recap of union membership in your region; highlight gains, losses and trends but also talk with officials and labor relations experts about new paradigms in union-employer cooperation.

• Select a neighborhood, an apartment building, a street and canvass it, mapping out the employment situation in each household compared to a year ago.

• Take the contrarian tack and find success stories. Some people are thriving despite the recession, snaring good jobs at great salaries. Locate them and share their tips.

• Retraining. What public programs are in the works, what are private employers and economic development agencies planning, what courses of study (like nursing) are overbooked, what are mid-career, displaced workers doing to find a new niche? Readers love career makeover features and they’re an inspiring flip side to a dismal jobs scene.

• Track your local workforce. Collect data on the average salaries of local residents in different professions. Feature a person from each occupation and list key statistics about their area of employment.

Come back to 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.

More autos news ahead

Don’t park those cash-for-clunkers notebooks just yet.

Automakers release August sales figures Tuesday afternoon, and the closely-watched monthly reports will get an even bigger buzz than usual because they’ll reflect results of the federal Car Allowance Rebate System (CARS) program that ended this week.

The $3 billion CARS rebates drove sales of nearly 700,000 vehicles, according to this U.S. Department of Transportation release. According to the breakdown, domestic car companies captured less than 40 percent of those sales, with transplants and foreign automakers luring the majority of buyers.

That’s one angle, depending on the dealer, supplier and factory mix in your territory.

For links to other clunker cash resources, review this past tipsheet.

A recent article from The Arizona Republic noted that although there's a paperwork delay, vehicle sales can be monitored through the number of titles issued by your state's motor vehicle division. And the article also suggested tracking auto sales through taxable-sales reported.

Another still-timely topic: Rebate red tape. Computers glitches snarled paperwork mid-week and I know at least one car buyer who won’t be driving home in her new vehicle for another week or so, until her sales rep has his government cash in hand. How many other deals languish in limbo, and how’s the restricted cash flow affecting auto retailers’ operations?

And what’s the sales plan for the balance of 2009, which some analysts say now is skewed because late-year shoppers rushed in ahead of schedule to snap up rebates. Do local lenders and auto retailers have promotional plans, financing, inventory and other tools at hand to keep the momentum going?

How is this new-car frenzy affecting the used-vehicle market? While traded-in clunkers will be destroyed, not resold, some of the top CARS sellers - including the Toyota Corolla, Honda Accord and Ford F150- are perennial pre-owned favorites. Check the classifieds and Craigslist to see if private and commercial sellers are now stuck with unwanted stock.

From an economic standpoint: the DOT claims that CARS saved 42,000 jobs – do any of them belong to your readers? Ford and GM have boosted production, ostensibly due to increased demand.

For general hints on covering auto sales, check out this earlier tipsheet.

Be sure to sign up at PR Newswire so you’ll get the auto sales reports via e-mail as they trickle out Sept. 1(in no particular order, though Ford usually is first)

If you’re new to covering the automotive industry, get up to speed by reading J.D. Power and Associates’ commentary on the monthly global sales reports they make available free of charge to registered users at their automotive forecasting Web site.

To be really au courant on cars, subscribe to the free e-mail feed at Automotive News.
And in one last shameless plug: My former colleagues at The Detroit News make autos coverage a 24/7 crusade; bookmark their portal for a steady stream of authoritative news, reviews, blogs and special reports.

Come back to 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.

When banks go bad

Nothing quite kills that T.G.I.F. buzz like word that your bank has been seized by the feds.

But it’s even more of a downer if you happen to be the financial reporter on duty, with an empty notebook and two hours to go before that 7 p.m. deadline.

Think it can’t happen on your watch? So far this year, regulators have shut down nearly 80 banks, ranging from $25 billion household names like Colonial Bank to little Corn Belt Bank and Trust Co. of Pittsfield, Ill.

With four more months left to go in the year and a recent warning from Congress that many banks still are in jeopardy due to the troubled loans and other iffy assets they hold. (For basic information about understanding bank financials and regulation, check out this previous tipsheet.)

Doing a little advance work could save you a lot of stress one of these Friday nights. Besides, few things rattle readers like bank failures, and you’ll want to be their go-to site for updates and reassurance.

Few industries have such labyrinthine regulatory arrangements – depending on a bank’s charter they could be supervised by one of several state or federal agencies. Before crunch time, you might want to make a simple spreadsheet listing the financial institutions in your area, the relevant oversight body and key after-hours contact info for each.

Fortunately the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC)– the government body that insures deposits and usually becomes the receiver of troubled banks – also is a central clearinghouse for reporters and consumers.

Andrew Gray, the FDIC director of public affairs, says the FDIC sends out press releases on every bank closure concurrent with the release from the regulatory body. Nothing is ever embargoed or released selectively in advance, Gray said, because generally banks are scurrying until the absolute last minute to obtain financing or other means of staying liquid. So if you go to the FDIC site and sign up for e-mail releases, you’ll get the news at the same time everyone else does.

The FDIC and related sites also have a font of consumer protection info, with FAQs about deposit insurance and other things your readers want to know. With so many bank failures in the news right now, it would be smart to put together a little Web package outlining bank insurance basics, hotlines, Internet sites and other resources. Then, if one happens in your market, you can pop that up online with a few preliminary points from the press release and not waste precious time creating a fact box.

Bank failures tend to be announced on Friday nights, Gray said, because it gives the feds the weekend to straighten out paperwork and “make sure it’s business as usual on Monday morning. Consumers are going to see the same faces they saw on Friday.”


For reporters, it’s not as grim as after-hours news could be – Gray said the media is welcome on site at failed banks – the next day, if the bank in question has Saturday hours - and that one of his staff or an FDIC ombudsman will be on hand to field questions. Better yet, the media relations contact numbers on the FDIC releases are answered nights and weekends, so you won’t have to wring your hands until Monday for official comment. If the failed bank is being acquired, the FDIC likely can put you in touch with the new owners, Gray said.

Of course, you’ll also want to talk to bank patrons, industry analysts and shareholders – more people whose cell phone numbers you should get now, not next Friday at 5:45 p.m.

Come back to 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.

Digging into development

It’s not what you know, it’s whom you know.

And if there’s one single business beat that epitomizes that old saw, it’s the commercial development realm.

Stagnant strip malls, overbuilt office complexes, failed factories - they seem to be lurking everywhere. And they’re not just an aesthetic blight, they’re a constant reminder of moribund local economies.

Now – when things are quiet, to say the least – is a good time to pave your path into the commercial real estate beat. Don’t wait until development’s eventual rebound to start forging relationships in this fruitful arena.

A few gallons of coffee downed this fall over vacancy-rate chitchat can determine whether you have next year’s 1A scoop about a new Fortune 500 firm coming to town, or whether you hear about it on the radio en route to the office.

As with residential real estate stories, a good place to start is the National Association of Realtors. Their site’s commercial channel offers e-newsletter sign-up, Twitter sign-up and other resources for keeping tabs on overarching trends.

The NAR’s affiliate CommercialSource.com is a great tool for searching commercial listings by market, with links to a variety of other organizations and data providers.

On a regional scale, some of the Federal Reserve banks track commercial occupancy rates and trends; here’s a link to a previous tipsheet about how to find the FRB that oversees your territory. Some local listing services also do periodic analyses of commercial space; the commercial lending divisions of your hometown banks can give guidance there.

Better yet, get in your car and drive around. Those giant “For Lease” signs in key business districts, on landmark buildings and at stalled malls will give you quite a list of names and numbers with which to start.

Take it slow. People sitting on millions of square feet of costly, idle space don’t need us to rub it in. Set up a lunchtime backgrounder and ask about challenges unique to your market, key pending projects, what’s on hold, etc. Do this a few times and slowly but surely you’ll become attuned to the big plays in office and industrial real estate.

Bone up ahead of time by visiting the Web portal of Site Selection magazine, the bible of the real estate and development sector. In addition to timely analysis on topics ranging from public policy to real estate finance, Site Selection produces tools like annual state and market rankings that can add context and texture to your local reports.

Come back to 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.

Durables can reveal signs of local recovery

OK, so no one’s ever dreamed about striding to a podium, awash in applause, to accept an award for a well-reported can’t-put-it-down durable goods order story. (Right?)

Still, for those of us fortunate enough to still have any manufacturers to cover, the U.S. Census Bureau’s monthly update – July numbers are due out Wednesday at 8:30 a.m. - is a good source of comparative data for layering into stories about local industry.

And even if your nearby factories have been idled or shuttered, your territory probably includes dealers or operators of farm equipment, appliances, furniture, MRI machines, computers, toys and TVs, to name a few.

Factories and their workers all are affected by demand for durables – defined as equipment intended to last for more than a couple of years. (By comparison, non-durables would encompass consumable items from toothpaste to blue jeans to plastic bags and gasoline.)

Each month the Census Bureau releases its M3 report, formally known as Manufacturers’ Shipments, Inventories and Orders.

The M3 is considered a harbinger of industrial activity, can move the market and a sustained uptick would be seen as a light at the end of our recessionary tunnel. Analysts were pleasantly surprised by June’s numbers, which showed an unexpected 1.1 percent increase in orders, excluding aircraft and automobiles.

Since cars and planes are the biggies and tend to last the longest – there are probably DC-9s soaring around out there older than you! – orders for those items can skew a report and hence are generally stripped out of the numbers analysts use to get a true picture of manufacturing momentum.

Read down into the durable goods press release for information about specific products and sectors which may springboard ideas for coverage in your area. Home builders, defense contractors, retailers – they’ll all be eyeing the report and can give you their take on what it bodes for local business recovery.

Academic economists also will have their take on the report.

Transport firms – trucks, railroads and air freight coordinators – must be in your vicinity and can you give you the haulers-eye view of what’s moving. And of course, somebody’s got to finance all that hardware – talk to lenders and retailers about the business and consumer credit situation going into the fourth quarter.

Durable goods may not sound too sexy but they pay a lot of bills and sustain a lot of jobs. Illustrating the connection from the M3 to your readers is a challenge but one worth taking on.

Come back to 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.

Revamping retirement stories

Given the stock market dive of the past year, it would be fitting if retirement plan statements came embedded with those tiny greeting-card sound chips, only instead of “Happy Birthday” they could emit the ominous themes from “Jaws” or “Halloween.”

Then again, many savers have been pitching the statements unopened into a drawer rather than torment themselves with the 40-percent gouge in their nest egg.

But on Friday, the major U.S. stock indices closed at peaks not reached since last fall, and oil futures touched a 2009 high.

In even better news, the Friday spike was driven by good news on the housing front. Here’s a previous Daily Tipsheet with links to resources for covering stock swings.

The midsummer market rally has once again piqued interest in investing, however. So, even if you don’t manage a full-time personal finance beat, you should consider localizing market moves with a little expert advice.


The key to a good personal finance story is making it digestible. Long blocks of prose are a turn-off, so use an alternative format like a Q&A or a case study. One of the most useful is a life-stage approach – find five advisers and ask them each to address an age range – 25, 35, 45, 55 or 65 years old – listing dos and don’ts for investors in each decade.

Be picky about your experts. There are honorable people in all occupations, but human nature being what it is, I’m more comfortable relaying tips from fee-only advisors who don’t work on commission from brokerage or insurance firms. Perhaps the most respected credential belongs to Certified Financial Planners; you can do a zip code search for those in your area at the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards site.

Meanwhile, if finance isn’t your forte, brush up on investing terminology at 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 basics.

Best of all, the units feature quizzes, so you can tell immediately whether or not you’ve grasped the concepts. Morningstar analysts also are a great source of insight when markets fluctuate.

Remember, there’s nothing people like reading about more than their own money, so burnish your byline by brushing up on personal finance.

Come back to 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.

Clunker cash on last lap

“Cash for Clunkers” may end Monday, but there’s still plenty of mileage left in the Car Allowance Rebate System (CARS) story.

The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) said late Thursday that it will shut down the auto-rebate program after this weekend, with dealers on an 8 p.m. Monday deadline to submit applications. The CARS program, which had originally been expected to last through October, faced unexpected demand and earlier was augmented with an extra $2 billion in funding.

Here’s the DOT’s Thursday press release , and here’s a fact sheet about the "orderly wind down" the agency is hoping for.

Dealers are being urged to focus on paperwork vs. sales over the next few days. The DOT says it’s reviewed about 150,000 CARS deals out of an estimated 450,000-plus eligible transactions. It’s got extra staffers on hand to process applications and held a Webinar earlier this week to reiterate rules to auto retailers.

While the DOT clearly doesn’t want a tidal wave of new buyers to hit showrooms today, you might want to serve your readers by getting a Web story up ASAP reiterating deadlines and rules, as well as what paperwork they’ll need to make a last-minute deal and take advantage of rebates up to $4,500. For background and other resources, check out this earlier tipsheet on the clunkers rebates.

Then, head out to showrooms and set up your weekend or Monday stories. Are dealers in your area awash in claim forms? Will they be holding an all-hands-on-deck marathon paperwork session this weekend, or clocking out as usual? What glitches are they experiencing? How’s traffic on the lots, and which models are moving?

For biz features, get creative with video and audio – cars and engines are natural subjects, especially on a late-summer weekend. If you ferret out the right car owner – one with lots of family snapshots and a knack for storytelling – you could even produce a montage of one clunker’s rise and fall. Maybe it’s my Motor City ties, but whenever a truckload of those crushed cars wheels past, I muse that every single cube of scrap once was someone’s brand-new pride and joy.

Now, here’s a description of dealership workers performing automotive euthanasia. Footage of some cast-off having its engine deliberately seized – juxtaposed with photos from its heyday -- would be informative and poignant.

Getting back to biz: Try for a sit-down with retailers’ general managers and financial officers. What has the CARS program meant to their sales and profits? Do they worry about the oft-repeated claim that it’s merely siphoned demand from the rest of the year? What else do they have in the pipeline to capitalize on momentum and remain viable?

Come back to "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.

Covering charge card reform

“Veni, vidi, Visa!”

One of the sporadic shopaholics in my family coined that take-off on Julius Caesar’s “I came, I saw, I conquered,” line about 20 years ago, while wielding her plastic with gusto.

The quip was a scream, but for millions of Americans who racked up debt with similar abandon, lenders got the last laugh. Over the past decade or so, all sorts of arcane accounting devices were developed to wring the most revenue out of an open charge card balance, from double-cycle billing to boost finance charge to universal-default rules that hike interest rates if borrowers are spotted make a late payment – to another vendor. Rule changes were sprung on customers via microscopic type on plain little black-and-white folded pamphlets.

Still, we gorged on easy money, and everyone laughed at numerous tales of easy credit being extended to dogs, babies and garden gnomes as banks furiously churned out pre-approved offers for more. Then the economic tides turned, a wallet load of credit cards ceased being a status symbol and consumers were aghast when they took a good hard look at what they’d signed up for.

As of June, we owed about $917 billion on revolving credit accounts, according to the Federal Reserve’s G-19 Consumer Credit report. Congress got in on the act and earlier this year passed the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure Act of 2009, which President Obama signed into law in May.

Here’s the White House fact sheet on the bill; some of its provisions kick in today. From now on, credit card issuers have to mail bills three weeks before they are due, and they’ll have to give customers 45 days to mull their options – including a new payoff plan - when rate increases loom.

For more on the credit card reform provisions, more of which take effect in February, here’s a Consumer Reports page devoted to the act and related info.

One caveat: Many consumer advocates – and journalists – trumpet the new legislation as a triumph over evil predatory lenders. To be sure, issuers’ ingenuity definitely has been in overdrive when it comes to some of the convoluted fee and billing structures, and there is no question that glitzy marketing materials eclipsed the plain-Jane contracts that bind so many people to debt.

But it’s not a one-sided story, so don’t write it that way. Many prompt payers will see their rates rise, too, as banks compensate for revenue lost elsewhere. Those who use cards for convenience and rewards, without carrying a balance, may see the return of annual fees and the shriveling of points programs. Always look for the contrarian view when reporting on consumer affairs.

Consumer Action, in their just-released annual survey, takes a look at the pros and cons of the bill, as well as other trends in credit card policy.

Come back to 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.

When weather makes biz stories

Feel like you’ve been trapped inside your laptop all summer? Grab an umbrella or an ice pack, as the case may be, and head for the door.

As Hurricane Bill whirls his way toward the Atlantic coast, heat waves roast the northwest, thunderstorms pound the central states and autumn looms for all of us, it’s not a bad time to get out and explore the financial effects of weather.

Clearly weather affects consumer behavior at the retail level and can make or break a season for firms ranging from mom & pop hardware stores to giant theme parks, from truckers to fashion buyers. Think ski resorts, fisheries, campgrounds, wineries, race tracks, souvenir shops and the person trying to figure out how many snow boots to order for Sears.

From a personal finance angle, how are your readers affected? Higher utility costs, flood insurance, repair and mitigation services can strain pocketbooks regionwide when Mother Nature misbehaves.

While some are hurt by weather anomalies, others reap. Resort operators may cringe at the approach of a storm, but who wouldn’t like to be a plywood purveyor in the path of a hurricane, or an air-conditioned theater on a 100-degree day?
If you’re undergoing a few days of volatile climate conditions, spin a local business story or two. Aside from the short-term scenarios just mentioned, it’s a good opportunity to speak with local industries about their longer-term meteorological strategies, logistics and risk management planning. You can spice up print and online packages with weather maps, explanatory graphics and climate lore unique to your area.

Helpful resources, aside from your local National Weather Service bureau, include this National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration economics page, which explains weather’s economic impact on a variety of business and industry sectors.

Manufacturers, utilities, retailers, health-care concerns – all of the big employers in your area have an eye on the barometer at some level in their operations. Find the person in charge before an emergency strikes; you’ll generate a good biz feature now and an invaluable entry in your contacts file should a major weather emergency strike your turf.

An article last summer in The Wall Street Journal, for example, detailed Wal-Mart Inc.’s emergency preparedness plan – one aimed not just at protecting corporate property offering Wal-Mart stores as community shelters – in anticipation of Hurricane Gustav. Who knew that the massive retailer keeps an in-house meteorologist on staff?

Other businesses use third-party “industrial meteorology” services, like Alabama-based AWIS, www.awis.com which can advise corporate clients using proprietary analysis like its Livestock Heat Index. The American Meteorological Society, a professional organization, also maintains a committee that studies the societal impact of weather; its panel members are worth investigating for expertise or advice in your area.

Come back to 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.

Checking up on local banks

Bank shares took an especially heavy beating in Monday’s stock market sell-off, and no wonder. Despite billions of taxpayer dollars spent on bailouts, financial institutions are failing at a pretty fast clip this year.

According to a report in Monday’s The Wall Street Journal, citing the FDIC, 77 banks have failed this year – five of them last Friday – and some 300 more are viewed by federal regulators as at risk.

And last week, the Congressional Oversight Panel supervising TARP bailout funds released this report warning that many banks are still holding troubled assets on their books.

The problem is particularly acute for smaller banks, the report says, because they hold more commercial loans, with a high default risk, and more whole loans, which also can be wiped out by default faster than a pool of securitized loans. Meanwhile, smaller banks don’t have the same access to capital as larger institutions.

“Given the ongoing uncertainty, vigilance is essential,” the report urges. They’re speaking to federal regulators, but as a journalist you should take this as a sign that your local banking institutions deserve a second look.

It’s not an easy task – banking and finance are complex disciplines with confusing and arcane accounting conventions, terminology, you name. Because they don’t produce ‘stuff’ or provide tangible services like hair cuts or computer repair, they record their numbers differently than those in other sectors.

For starters, here’s a very good article from Investopedia.com about analyzing a banking institution’s income statements, complete with explanatory graphics.

It explains how banks derive income – basically by taking deposits and lending the money out to others at a profitable interest rate. Major risks are that the borrower will default or that interest rates will fall and the bank be obligated to pay out more than it actually earns on loans.

Get to know the regulators at your state level; the National Association of State Credit Union Supervisors and the Conference of State Bank Supervisors can point you in the right direction.

Federal regulatory sites abound and you’ll need to dig to determine who’s in charge of specific companies in your market. The Web sites of the 12 Federal Reserve banks, as well as the federal Comptroller of the Currency, Office of Thrift Supervision and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. all offer other educational materials online.

One interesting place to start is this FDIC database; you can run a report by county or other parameters showing each financial institution ranked by market share of deposits. It’s a fast and convenient way to find out which institutions your readers trust the most with their cash.

Then, check those banks against the American University’s Investigative Reporting Workshop’s BankTracker database. In addition to detailing how much TARP money specific banks received, the database – a synthesis of FDIC reports on thousands of banks -- depicts each institution’s ‘troubled asset ratio’ compared to its capital and loan-loss reserves. The closer those two figures, the riskier the bank’s situation and the numbers provide an excellent opening for interviews with local bank execs.

Come back to 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.

Black gold, Texas tea

If you’re having one of those days, cheer up by reminding yourself: “Well, at least I didn’t buy oil futures at $140 a barrel last year.”

Crude is trading at about half that now. Demand for energy tends to wane in a recession, with businesses stoking few factories, truckers toting fewer goods and – in the U.S. alone – about 6 million ex-workers not making that daily commute.

That’s the simplified version, of course, and many other factors – geopolitics, world currency values, inventories, what the cartel decides to do – also affect petroleum prices. And they’re creeping up, which is why you might want to put an oil story on your agenda soon.

If you’re not in an oil-producing state, you still might have refineries, a pipeline or some link in the supply chain, oil recyclers, transporters, exploration and certainly consumption. Not all oil-related firms are run by swaggering billionaires; poke around and see what you can find in your market.

Meanwhile, if you think Brent Crude is an adult film star and West Texas Intermediate sounds like a middle school somewhere near El Paso, take heart. There are plenty of resources for understanding those two common petroleum benchmarks and lots more about world’s most hotly traded commodity.

Start with the Energy Industry Administration. This unit of the U.S. Department of Energy has accessible analysts, tons of explanatory background material, historical price data for your charts and graphics and much more on its petroleum page. It even offers a chatty “This Week in Petroleum” newsletter; sign up here for e-mail feeds.

Here are other helpful sources on oil; several feature spreadsheets, databases and other elements that make great sidebars or interactive Web tools for your online packages

• American Petroleum Institute, an industry group.
• Pipeline101, another industry site with helpful info about the nation’s 200,000 miles of oil pipeline.
• NYMEX, the New York Mercantile Exchange, where oil futures are traded.
• Rigzone, an industry publication.
• Your state’s public service or utility commission.

Rising oil prices are sometimes a sign of economic recovery as corporations and consumers have more activity to fuel. Pundits lately are divided on whether that’s at work now, or whether the weaker dollar is just luring more traders into oil futures. Either way, a higher cost per barrel will translate into more expensive transportation and heating this fall.

Come back to 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.

Why wholesale prices matter

Ever wonder what KFC is forking out for “processed young chickens” these days, or how much a paper maker pays for a pound of wood pulp? Me neither.

But wholesale prices do affect the costs of consumer goods, not to mention corporate earnings – or lack thereof - and hence jobs, the stock market and other tangible aspects of our fiscal well-being.

For the fundamentals on the monthly Producer Price Index, which will be released Tuesday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, check out its comprehensive Web site and tutorial. Like the CPI discussed in a previous tipsheet, the PPI measures the cost of goods and services – in this case, raw or semi-finished materials sold to businesses.

For your corporate coverage, talk to executives about how their financial strategies fluctuate with the inflation rate. Many airlines, for example, have been recording profits or losses based more on the outcome of their fuel-price hedging rather than on the fares we pay for our munchkin-sized coach seats. Other industries stock up on or speculate in the raw goods that make up their products; see if major local employers will they’ll share economic forecasts and the reasoning behind them.

Housing data mania next week

Just a heads up that, as usual, the last two weeks of the month teem with housing data that can help you layer anecdotal stories with statistics. Among the releases coming up:

Aug. 17: National Association of Homebuilders housing market index
Aug. 18: Commerce Dept. housing starts, building permits
Aug. 19: Mortgage Bankers Association applications
Aug. 21: National Association of Realtors existing home sales
Aug. 25: S&P Case/Shiller home price index
Aug. 26: Commerce Dept. new home sales

This Reynolds Center centerpiece by Stephanie Riel offers invaluable hints for covering today’s residential real estate market. And here’s a past tipsheet with related advice.

Bored with the same-old, same-old? Try writing from a non-consumer point of view. It must be pretty grim trying to earn a living as a Realtor these days -- talk to some about their livelihood, fallback plans and whether they’re moonlighting to keep the cash coming in. Imagine the irony of finding a real estate agent who’s in foreclosure herself, or a mortgage broker who can’t make his own house payment. People in those lines of work were all but beating off business with a stick a few short years ago, but when you’re in commissioned sales the downturns really sting.

Also feeling the pain: Homeowners’ associations. Strapped consumers are withholding condo maintenance fees, leaving association boards hamstrung when it comes to paying vendors and repair firms. That starts a downward spiral of declining amenities and sub-par maintenance which doesn’t exactly help move real estate in a stagnant market.

Come back to 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.

Resale Earns Respect

Thrift shopping’s image has gone from shabby to chic over the past year or so, with all sorts of newly minted ‘frugalistas’ touting the joys of secondhand bargains on approximately 9 million new personal blogs and message boards devoted to saving money during a recession.

Those of us who’ve long been able to spot a piece of vintage Fiesta ware at 50 feet, or snap up a never-worn black cashmere swing coat for a song, have viewed the energetic new competition with alarm.

But there is no question about it: Secondhand stores are mainstream these days and as such, belong in your business pages, as small business stories, sources for money-saving tips, reflections of the local economy, new tenants for vacant commercial space and other facets of the financial prism.

This year, the National Retail Federation even queried consumers about resale shopping for its venerable back-to-school sales survey. Discount stores still reign supreme but 18 percent of shoppers polled said they’ll be hitting thrift shops for school-days deals.

They’ll have plenty from which to choose. The National Association of Retail and Thrift Shops estimates that there are 25,000 to 30,000 non-profit and for-profit thrift, consignment and retail shops nationwide. In a recent survey, 64 percent of NARTS members reported that second-quarter sales were up an average 31 percent in 2009 compared to the same three months in 2008.

Two-thirds of sellers also said the volume of incoming inventory (traditionally from individuals looking to sell off discarded goods) also was up, and the quality of items had increased. In other words, dollar-wise consumers are cleaning out closets and donating goods for a tax write-off or consigning them to sale in hopes of a profit.

Audiences love to read about bargains and the multimedia/graphic possibilities abound – list of area thrift shops, tips from proprietors about how to make the most of consignment sales, tips from savvy consumers about how to unearth the best find. For the latter, just Google something like “garage sale queen” or “yard sale fanatic,” to find plenty of blogs by homegrown experts. Show readers what they can get for a $20 bill and two hours. Video a seasoned secondhander on the hunt.

A few resellers, like Plato’s Closet, Play It Again Sports and Children’s Orchard, are corporate franchises. Many more are mom-and-pop. Check out Too Good To Be Threw, the commercial site of veteran thrift store owner and how-to author Kate Holmes. She’s so immersed in the lifestyle she’s also written a resale-themed murder mystery! Resale.net has lots of interesting grass-roots links, and The National Flea Market Association is a portal to casual and weekend resellers; again, conversations with these folks can lead to pithy insights into your local economy. The NFAA even offers a “Flea Finder” interactive map linking to market sites state-by-state.

The main difficulty in covering the secondhand economy is finding objective third parties to help with perspective. Most academic and bank analysts don’t bother tracking used-goods stores. One source of expert commentary is the professional group for what used to be called ‘home ec.’ The media relations staff at the American Association of Family and Consumer Sciences will help you find experts who can talk about consumer habits and trends in your area.

Come back to 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.

An Inflation Intro

If you tune out when you hear the term “measure of inflation,” let alone the even more gripping “CPI,” try this: cost of living.

That’s the gist of what’s reflected by an important routine report due out Friday: how much we’re spending for fuel, food, shelter, coffins, cough drops and other must-haves. Compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Consumer Price Index measures how prices for common goods and services fluctuate. The CPI for July is due out at 8:30 a.m. on Friday.

It’s a pretty broad survey: BLS workers collect about 80,000 prices each month – on items ranging from electronics to aspirin to flank steak – from some 23,000 retail outlets. Fees on services like water and sewerage also are compiled, as are average rental rates. If you happen to live in a city where the data are collected, another fun story is to get permission to go along with a BLS worker as he or she gathers info at local stores.

We’re in a period of low inflation now, because (in simplest terms) competition for the few consumers still employed and spending keeps prices down. The most volatile components of the CPI tend to be fuel and food, which are affected by seasonal conditions, weather, etc. – which probably accounted for June’s slight inflation spike, because gasoline prices at the pump tend to peak in spring.

If all of this still is too abstract for you, consider: The CPI is used to determine COLA (cost-of-living) raises for millions of Social Security recipients, people working under union contracts, federal and military retirees. Food stamp recipients, children in school lunch programs and others – about 80 million people all told, the BLS says – have their benefits and/or wages tied to the rate of inflation.

That’s a pretty large chunk of your readership, and good fodder for personal finance, consumer and labor stories. The CPI release is summarized, of course, but the 100-page plus full reports really get into minute detail if you dig hard enough –right down to the price of movie theater tickets, dental services, lettuce and tomatoes, you name it. That translates into lots of conversation starters with retailers, restaurant owners, hair stylists, funeral directors and others who sell to the general public – a wealth of story ideas. And for more localizing assistance, periodic reports are issued for major metro areas and about 27 local areas.

The CPI Web site is rife with explanatory publications, downloadable historical data and other tools. It even offers an online tutorial for using the spreadsheets.

Another handy bookmark for your investing and finance coverage: the inflation calculator that shows how the purchasing power of the dollar has changed over the years.

Yikes! It takes $7.05 now to stretch as far as $1 did when I was born! Please, don’t do the math.

Come back to 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.

Store Wars and School Days

“Hit the books in great looks.” “Schooled in style.” “Retool for school.”

Those hip quips and many more from this week’s sales circulars really mean one thing: “Please buy our stuff!” The nation’s merchants, hobbled by the new cautious consumerism, are making a desperate last stand before Labor Day.

It’s hard to blame them. Back-to-school is our second busiest shopping season next to Christmas – meaning it’s retailers second-last chance to pull 2009 out of the red. Chain store sales were off 5 percent in July, reports the International Council of Shopping Centers, on track with similar drops earlier in the year.

Take a look at this recent tipsheet for links to major sources of retailing data – organizations you should bookmark and get to know.

Tomorrow and Thursday, key retailers report second-quarter earnings, including Macy’s, Nordstrom, Kohl’s, J.C. Penney and Wal-Mart. If any of those companies have a major presence in your market, you’ll want to pull the press release and keep it handy. One thing to note: Wal-Mart, as both the largest U.S. retailer and the dominant discounter, is considered by many analysts to be a major bellwether of consumer spending – representing as much as 15 percent of U.S. retail sales.

With that sort of clout, the quarterly results coming out of Wal-Mart’s Bentonville, Ark. headquarters can and do move the stock market. In fact, last May Wal-Mart – also the world’s largest private employer, by the way -- stopped reporting its monthly store sales, in an effort to calm volatility.

Obviously, no retailer’s second-quarter results will reflect back-to-school sales – at least until that probably-not-distant day when stores start those campaigns before the previous term is even out, the way Christmas merchandise now crowds beach balls and sand pails. But the Commerce Dept. on Thursday will release its take on July retail sales; check it out at 8:30 a.m. sharp. Here’s a link to the June release so you can scope the format; it’s interesting because it breaks down the results by category such as clothing, electronics, health and personal care (drug stores) and so on.

Meanwhile do peruse the sales fliers to hone your next back-to-school story idea. A consumer story about freebies and bargains would be a good draw; Kmart is offering free pencils while Office Depot counters with free Crayolas. Other special offers are out there; I see Michael’s has jumped on the teacher-appreciation bandwagon launched by Staples and is offering an extra discount for classroom supplies.

Even hardware stores and other unlikely chains are getting into the act with specials on storage tubs, vitamins – no stretch is too great to capture the school-kids dollar. Many states just held their sales-tax-free weekend; others are yet to come. Check out this list and do a port-mortem or a preview.

Home in on one specific angle – cost of sports supplies, the contentious “school supply lists” that elementary teachers issue and other back-to-school issues that affect a specific slice of your readership. A few years ago one of my Detroit News colleagues wrote about “the cost of a high school senior,” – from photos to prom to college application fees, the senior sticker shock made for an excellent read.

Come back to 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.

Know your Federal Reserve

Bank regulators hold a routine two-day session this Tuesday and Wednesday -- and if there’s one way to know you’re an incorrigible business writer, it’s when you find yourself waiting with bated breath for their 2:15 p.m. EDT interest-rate announcement.

But if you’re looking for suspense, instead rent the science fiction thriller, Minority Report, with its way-cool scene of Tom Cruise reading an e-paper version of USAToday. With mixed economic reports and a gun-shy stock market, the Federal Open Market Committee won’t be boosting borrowing costs off their rock-bottom levels any time soon.

The fed funds rate is at 0.25 percent – down from 2 percent a year ago. Any lower and banks would be paying us to borrow money instead of the other way around!

That underlying rate, set the by federal banking system, is what financial institutions charge one another for overnight loans that keep their cash flow positive. In turn, they add a premium – it varies depending on the type of loan – to the finance charges they levy on customers for mortgages, car notes, credit cards and other debt. (Here’s a handy Bankrate.com chart that tracks a variety of key interest rates.)

When money is more expensive, businesses are limited in what they can spend to grow and consumers can’t stretch their dollars as far, either. They don’t spend on goods; businesses suffer more; their shares are worth less, and the downward spiral whirls on. So when regulators are trying to get the economy humming again, they keep rates low.

Of course, that’s a highly simplified version of a complex system that one could spend a lifetime studying -- which, for most of us, ranks right up there in appeal with trigonometry or the foraging habits of Canadian geese. But getting to know the Federal Reserve – parent entity to the FOMC -- and how the nation’s banking system operates is worth a bit of study. In addition to setting monetary policy, this body regulates nitty-gritty financial matters such as payment-card and check processing, truth-in-lending laws and more. Subscribe to the fed’s Bulletin newsletter for access to papers, reports and research data that may provide grist for econ or personal finance stories.

Speaking of personal finance, the Federal Reserve system includes 12 regional federal banks; here’s a handy map with links to each bank’s site. Most provide a treasure trove of regional economic data, research, forecasts and consumer advice, all of which can help you reflect your readers’ situation more precisely. Note events and conferences as well; get permission to attend and mingle with key financial executives in your neck of the wood.

And if this post has whetted your appetite for more, check out this free informational DVD, "In Plain English: Making Sense of the Federal Reserve." It ain’t exactly the latest M. Knight Shyamalan plot-twister, but it might give you an edge in producing coherent financial prose.

Come back to 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.

Keeping Tabs on Corporate Taxes

Earlier this week the Associated Press published a special enterprise report highlighting this year’s drastic falloff in federal revenue due to companies and individuals earning less and therefore paying less in taxes.

The AP analyzed federal tax receipts going back nearly 100 years and found that revenues hadn’t dropped so much since the Great Depression. The shortfall boosts worries about Social Security and Medicare solvency, as well as the ballooning federal deficit and how we as a nation will pay for universal health care and other proposed programs.

Interesting story, but what’s that got to do with your business beat? Quite a bit, actually. Among the AP’s findings: The amount of federal income taxes owed by corporations is down an astounding 57 percent this year.

And when taxable income drops that much, companies have to tighten their belts somehow. Some methods are obvious and tend to get a lot of coverage, like production cuts and layoffs. Others are more subtle, like squeezing price concessions out of smaller suppliers. If you cover a dominant player in your region, check with the companies that sell to them. You might not get much on the record – who wants to badmouth their best customer in public? But by developing those relationships you’ll emerge with plenty of fodder for questioning execs at the top firms.

Another measure of concern to your readers: Companies in financial trouble tend to cut dividends, the quarterly payout to investors. Not all publicly traded firms pay dividends on their common stock, but many of those who do (or did) tend to be venerable employers whose workers, retirees and local investors depend on those pennies per share to grow their portfolios or eke out cash flow. A dividend cut is huge news and well worth inquiring about if you spot a sustained earnings slump.

The flip side of the drastic drop in corporate tax revenue is what it means to those who derive their business from government contracts. (Because while the AP story only looked at federal revenue, you can be the states that levy corporate income tax are watching their incomes dwindle too. The Tax Foundation compiles information about state tax rates and other background.) As budgets are slashed, firms that build roads, expand airports and otherwise sell to public entities are going to be hurting. A round-table with major contractors in your territory – from cement companies to architects to the private shops that provide orange barrels during roadwork – could yield a gritty economic forecast piece.

One caveat: The subject of corporate taxation is controversial and most analysts have an axe to grind one way or the other. Don’t let yourself get derailed by an argument that will make readers’ eyes glaze over. Just use the data to add authority and texture to factual stories about the here and now of corporate income.

Come back to 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.

Golf to the Fore

Biz news has been pretty heavy lately, so let’s take a breather and focus on a picturesque weekend feature.

According to numerous event calendars, August is National Golf Month. I realize these industry "holidays" are phony and manufactured, but they come in pretty handy sometimes as a news peg for a worthwhile but rather orphaned story idea.

The ubiquitous sport of golf is a likely pick that generates a lot of spending in most areas and is flush with novel spin-off possibilities. According to the National Golf Foundation, it’s a $75 billion-a-year industry in the United States – and that sounds low to me given the NGF claims that more than 28 million players a year hit nearly the nation’s nearly 16,000 golf courses.

Your state’s travel and tourism department likely can come up with an estimate of golf’s impact on the local economy. Besides the NGF, the industry-sponsored Golf 20/20 site focuses on the sport’s financial impact and offers myriad studies and reports as well as a directory of state-level affiliates. Golf Digest magazine online provides up-to-date industry news and trends.

Talk with local vendors about how they’re coping with this year’s grim economy, or to ferret out small business and career features. Pro shops, instructors, equipment dealers and manufacturers, golf course design and landscaping specialists, municipal golf course managers and vendors of supplies from food to fertilizer are just a handful of the ideas that come to mind.

If you like trend stories, find out whether courses in your area are keeping pace with competitors providing catering and banquet services for weddings and other non-golf events. Are they doing double duty, switching to cross-country ski routes in winter to maximize their seasons?

Another competitive angle: Many country clubs and courses are cutting dues, offering incentives to lure junior members and otherwise responding to their clientele’s financial straits. What are the hot discounts and promotions in your area, and are they working?
Play Golf America, a sort of information coalition sponsored by various leagues, also highlights corporate golf – surely that’s big business. It also features resources for golfers with disabilities – an area I haven’t seen explored yet. Even blind individuals play golf and there are trainers who specialize in helping handicapped people learn the game. The site includes a zip-code search function for many of its channels, so you can find local experts and providers easily.

If you’re covering the work-life beat, how about reviewing the notion of golf as a career? The Professional Golf Management program developed in conjunction with the PGA of America and offered at 20 universities nationwide touts 100 percent job placement. Doing what, they don’t quite say.

Or, take a look at golf as a career-builder in your business community. I’ve often felt at a disadvantage because not playing the game costs me a number of professional networking opportunities each year; you might talk with career coaches, management experts and the like about whether strolling the links with the boss really does help boost one up the corporate ladder. This 2008 survey www.CIO.com, the site for IT executives, says golf is over-rated as a way to chum up with business colleagues, but I’m not sure I buy it – especially for sales people and others who trade heavily on relationships.

Come back to 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.

Working the Jobs Reports

Two major batches of job-related data are due out over the next couple of days. If it’s been a while since you visited the employment scene, now’s a good opportunity to ponder more ways to provide informative and useful information to readers concerned about finding or hanging on to a job. These days, that group includes pretty much everyone.

In fact, here’s an idea you might try for a riveting enterprise piece: I’ve noticed lately that here on my solidly middle-class, tree-shaded street, there are a lot fewer cars wheeling out of driveways at 7:30 a.m.

On my block, there’s a former senior VP for an international auto supplier doing a lot of gardening this summer instead. An out-of-work IT professional is looking for piano playing gigs and a laid-off career purchasing manager for a manufacturing firm now spends his days driving his elderly mom to doctor appointments. A truck driver was furloughed in July due to the automotive industry crisis, and a dental-lab tech has been sent home early (without pay) because laid-off patrons simply aren’t getting their teeth fixed as often.

And those are just the ones I’m aware of, on an obscure little lane in middle America. A year or so ago, these workers were enjoying their peak mid-career earning years and believed their prospects were solid and secure. Now they’re dipping into savings to pay for COBRA health insurance, scaling back retirement plans, giving up the lawn service and nervously half-joking about a second career at Home Depot.

Find a street, an apartment house or a condo complex in your city or town and go door to door, charting the jobs and prospects – or lack thereof - among the occupants. If they’re employed, do they expect to stay that way? If they’re not, what are they living on? What’s their Plan B? For the Web, envision an interactive map with a Google-earth aerial view that includes pop-up infographics and video interviews about each household in a microcosm of your community. Your readers will be glued to their screens, especially if you include sidebars about upcoming job fairs, retraining programs, state career-aid centers and the like.

One caveat: Do some fact-checking. Even decent people are self-conscious when talking about personal finances and might be inclined to embellish things in order to save face or appear sympathetic. If someone tells you they were just laid off after 25 years, call human resources to verify. If they claim to be limping along on $300 a week in unemployment, ask to see their paperwork. Bolster the individual anecdotes with statistics that reflect the state of your subjects’ industries and occupations, and interviews with recruiters and major employers. Rigorous reporting will net the grittiest and most compelling detail.

Back to the data, which you can use to put local anecdotes in context:

Tomorrow at 8:30 a.m. the Labor Department releases weekly jobless claims; last week’s report showed an uptick week-over-week although the four-week average slipped. Check out this earlier tipsheet on deciphering the weekly jobless figures and how to put a face on the abstract data with local story angles and state-level charts and graphics.

On Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics posts its monthly Employment Situation report. This is the more comprehensive of the two reports and the one from which the national unemployment rate is derived. The numbers are sliced by all sorts of interesting demographic and industry sectors, so chances are strong you’ll find an angle in there somewhere that reflects your audience. And unlike the weekly jobless claims release, which counts only people eligible for unemployment benefits, this report purports to count the nation’s many marginally employed, underemployed and those ‘discouraged’ workers who are too demoralized to pursue their job hunt.

Come back to 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.

Tracking the Supply Chain

We’re in for another smorgasbord of economic reports this week, with key statistics about jobs, industry, credit and housing on the agenda.

Some of this macro data normally wouldn’t get much of a look – outside of certain analysts’ offices – in the sluggish weeks leading up to Labor Day. But this is no ordinary August, with the ongoing summer rally in U.S. stock markets, relatively upbeat GDP and car sales numbers and other signs prompting pundits to whisper of an end to the recession.

Take time to digest the Institute for Supply Management releases out this week. This trade group for supply and logistics professionals has been publishing these closely watched surveys since 1931. Monday’s ISM manufacturing report, which showed that sector still is weak but getting stronger, drove much of yesterday’s market gains, shoving the Nasdaq and S&P 500 indices to peaks not reached since last fall.

Out tomorrow is the mirror image of Monday’s release: the ISM Non-manufacturing survey. It reports on activity in sectors as wide-ranging as pet care, dry cleaning, entertainment, forestry and utilities, among many others. Each report is issued monthly; peruse the site for the methodology behind these reports, which are based on input from managers at the ISM’s member companies.

Keep in mind that despite the ISM’s focus on supply, the surveys deal with a variety of data from prices to employment to inventory levels; you can use the macro results to formulate questions for companies in your region. How are they faring compared to the national average?

Supply and logistics might sound sort of dry but is actually a rich source of ideas and information. And one way or another probably employs a good segment of your audience. Another trade group, the Council of Supply Chain Management Officials, offers educational resources and factoids on its Web site and says that the U.S. spending on logistics is larger than the GDP of all but 10 countries on the planet.

Definitely a sector worth understanding, and you’ll be well served by getting to know the players in your territory. If you’ve a shipping port or airport handy, start there, because transportation clearly is a huge part of the nation’s supply chain. Trucking firms, trucking schools, warehouses, service hubs – the list of story-worthy companies is legion. And it’s not all car parts on pallets – think Netflix or Amazon.com or livestock for interesting story springboards.

Other supply and logistics resources include the international Supply Chain Council, about the and oddly enough, a Logistics forum on About.com. This list of supply chain resources, courtesy of the University of Wisconsin library system, also is very helpful.

Housing data heads-up

Just a reminder that the National Association of Realtors monthly pending home sales index also is being released today; at the very least you’ll want to get a short story up on your Web site. Here’s a look back at an earlier tipsheet on localizing real estate stats.

Come back to 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.