The benefit of biz blogs

Still have 30 or 40 minutes a day that you aren’t glued to a portable electronic device?

If so, I can fix that for you: Add a few more blogs to your daily digital diet.

Blogs by analysts, insiders and enthusiasts can add a dimension to your reporting and help spark story ideas you wouldn’t get from more formal communication.

Corporate-sponsored fora, like Direct2Dell, obviously are going to be the most bland and sanitized, but still may alert you to event and product news.

And - especially if you cover multiple beats - blogs by sophisticated industry observers actually can serve as signposts that help you sift the issues and remain focused on key topics.

If you’re trying to incorporate secondary beats into your workload – say you’re an airlines reporter with an interest in IT, for example, but no time to report on it – monitoring blogs can help you keep abreast of the industry buzz until time permits a more in-depth look.

Blog-watching is, of course, no substitute for primary information-gathering – you still must perform the customary due diligence when preparing your own reports. Some blog operators are just gadflys and self-promoters, but others truly are authorities in their fields and might even merit a call or a quote. Just proceed with caution and be aware of the bloggers’ biases.

Here are a few specific sites I recommend:

• Fiat Economics is a timely, brisk, somewhat technical blog by Michael McDonough, an analyst and contributor to TheStreet.com. It’s especially helpful for his look-ahead columns that often run on Friday.

• Jalopnik is the daily go-to site for journalists on the automotive beat, with its mix of product news and corporate gossip. And at General Motors Corp., the FastLane entries by industry guru Bob Lutz is always an amusing read.

• The Consumerist is a watchdog blog now owned by Consumer Reports – sort of “The Daily Show” of consumer advocacy, with an irreverent wit but very timely and incisive skewering of corporate news, mis-steps and customer-relations faux pas.

If you have access to a Wall Street Journal online subscription, several of its blogs are worth note:

• The Numbers Guy is often, but not always, business-centric, these fascinating entries pick apart the numbers behind the headlines. Especially helpful for those who are math-phobic.

• The Health Blog offers an at-a-glance daily digest of the topics du jour on one of the hottest business beats, and a font of interesting feature stories.

• Bankruptcy Beat from the editors of the Dow Jones Bankruptcy Review; not only is it a great source of news, it’ll give you ideas on spinning off bankruptcy stories on your own turf.

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.

All Eyes on Automakers

Monthly U.S. auto sales tallies are always closely watched, but Monday’s numbers will be especially interesting because they’ll reflect a full week of sales under the federal "cash for clunkers" program.

Automotive sales, of course, have spent the past year in a free fall, sending General Motors and Chrysler to bankruptcy court and Capitol Hill for concessions. Thousands of workers have been furloughed, bought out, retired early or laid off.

Here’s how drastic the drop has been: In 2007, U.S. consumers wheeled away in some 16 million new cars trucks. This year, the most upbeat forecasters predict total sales of – maybe – 10 million vehicles. That’s nearly a 40 percent drop in two years – meaning 40 percent less revenue for pretty much the entire supply chain and everyone connected with auto retailers.

So even if you don’t have a car company headquarters or factory in your territory, chances are a good number of your readers have a vested industry in the health of the auto industry.(After all, as taxpayers they now own a majority stake in GM!)

The automakers – including the U.S. units of transplant and overseas companies, report monthly sales a day or two after the last business session of the previous month. Autodata Corp., an information service for the industry, posts the release calendar and year-to-date figures free of charge on its Web site.

The June tally is up now; take a look to make sure you understand the terminology. First you’ll see the year-over-year results – last June compared to this June, in raw numbers and in percentage-point change. (Those are the negative numbers in the third column, for most brands.) The next three columns are cumulative sales year-to-date, compared to the same period in 2008.

You also should understand SAAR – that is, the seasonally adjusted annual rate of sales, a measure of how many cars could be expected to sell in a year if the pace of the current month continues.

Autodata also provides an aggregated spreadsheet at the end of the day to some media outlets; the reports are a valuable shortcut in creating charts and info boxes. The firm has been inundated of late with media requests and might switch to a paid subscription, so don’t put away your calculator just yet. Meanwhile, a polite request to media@motorintelligence.com may just get you a coveted spot on their distribution list.

Another way to prep: Check out the company-by-company forecasts by industry watchers such as Edmunds.com; while not infallible, these predictions can help you get a feel for the story-du-jour in auto sales. Sometimes it’s external forces like the current rebate program; other months it’s the horse race for the No. 1 position or the dive in truck and SUV demand.

Individual company releases (sign up for them at individual automaker media Web sites or via PR Newswire – and do it today, not Monday) come in no particular order and trickle out after noon on the appointed date – leaving you the morning free to troll dealerships for retailer and consumer comments.

Check around today to see if you can sit in on (and video) the closing of a new-car deal Monday morning; hearing the voice of a consumer who decided to take the plunge – and the reasoning behind his or her purchase – will add quite a bit of human interest to what can seem like a dry numbers story. With billions of taxpayer dollars and hundreds of thousands of jobs at stake, car sales reports these days are anything but routine.

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.