The Reynolds Center’s original podcast series that dives into how you can find the money in any story — even if you aren’t a business journalist! From the sports beat to covering technology, this series includes writing and interview tips that journalists on any beat could use.
In this episode, hosted by Jenna Miller, Business journalism professors Karen Blumenthal, Andrew Cassel and Keith Herndon share their tips for engaging students in class. These instructors explain the creative way they encourage students to interact with businesses they don’t already have a connection to and the importance of reading other business stories, especially in their own communities. They originally shared these tips during Reynolds Week 2016.
The How to Cover Money podcast is back with Jenna Miller as this episode’s host. W.P. Carey School of Business professor Philip Drake and Bloomberg’s Tom Contiliano introduce business reporters to the art of reading financial statements. They share some of their tips for using those statements to investigate a company’s performance, past transactions, and cash flow to understand how well a company is really doing.
In this episode, hosted by Megan Calcote, Brandon Quester and Evan Wyloge of the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting share their tips for finding and using census data. Wyloge and Quester share their experiences searching through large datasets and what they have found to be more useful to drill down the numbers to your local area. They also share the websites and reports they find to be the most useful for story inspiration. They originally shared these tips during Reynolds Week 2016.
To read the AZCIR’s four-part investigation on hazardous chemicals, click below:
In this episode, host Megan Calcote highlights some of the best tips from the Reynolds Center presentation at SABEW 2015 with University of Michigan economist Donald Grimes. Grimes highlights the importance of regional data in national data series and where some of the best data sets are located. He explains how some of the surveys work and recommends when is the best time to look at those data sets. The conversation includes the importance of understanding sample sizes and how to dig deeper into outliers and large changes that appear over time.
To access some of the reports and surveys Grimes recommends during the podcast, click below:
In this podcast hosted by Megan Calcote, Glenn Hall, Executive Editor at the Washington Post, shares more tips for creating winning business investigations. He urges writers to break up long-form articles into short, easily digested pieces; beware the extreme anecdote; and employ videos, graphics and slideshows. Hall’s tips were originally shared during Reynolds Week 2016.
In this episode, hosted by Megan Calcote, Glenn Hall, Executive Editor at the Washington Post shares his tips for creating winning business investigations. In addition to discussing the importance of waving data into your story, Hall shares the other key elements that make a business investigation story stand out for readers. He originally shared these tips at Reynolds Week 2016.
In the third and final part of our conversation on covering the legal marijuana industry, Ricardo Baca, editor of The Denver Post’s website The Cannabist; and Kevin Dale, executive editor of Arizona PBS’s Cronkite News, share their insights from covering the industry in Colorado. Megan Calcote hosts this episode highlighting the journalists’ experience testing the potency of edibles and calling out the brands that failed to meet their own advertised standards. They also discuss the shift in public opinion and how local control in Colorado has played out since legalization.
For more information about investigations into product potency or to learn about chemical and pesticide testing in marijuana, visit the stories below.
If you missed part 1 and part 2 of this series, be sure to listen to them next!
In part two of covering the legal marijuana industry, host Megan Calcote highlights tips from Ricardo Baca and Kevin Dale that were presented during Reynolds Week 2016. Their discussion provides insights on seasonal sales trends, including the impact of tourism and the black market on the cannabis business in Colorado, and the complexities of an industry that is local at the state level but illegal federally.
Baca is the editor of The Denver Post’s website The Cannabist and Dale is the executive editor of Arizona PBS’s Cronkite News, who also directed pot coverage as a top editor at the Post.
More information regarding the lawsuits discussed during the podcast can be found at the links below:
This is part 2 of a three-part series. Be sure to check out part 1 and part 3 if you missed them after this.
In this episode of the How to Cover Money podcast, Megan Calcote reviews some of the tips on covering the legal marijuana industry that was originally shared at Reynolds Week 2016. The tips include the importance of highlighting the industry from a business perspective, including consumer trends, new businesses, and ancillary services, and the impact on the local community. These tips come from Ricardo Baca, editor of The Denver Post’s website The Cannabist; and Kevin Dale, executive editor of Arizona PBS’s Cronkite News, who directed pot coverage as a top editor at the Post.
This is the first in a three-part series on covering the marijuana industry. Be sure to listen to part 2 and part 3 after this episode.
Megan Calcote reviews some of the best tips for generating local story ideas by Jennifer Conlin, New York Times contributor and founder of Creative Voice. Conlin emphasizes the value of fresh perspectives, some observations she has made in her reporting and the importance of trusting your own instincts. Conlin originally shared these tips at SABEW 2015 during a session on covering regional economics.
In this episode, Megan Calcote discusses some of the tips Leslie Wayne, adjunct faculty at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University, shared during Reynolds Week 2016. Wayne shared tips on covering campaign finance including the added complexities after the Citizens United supreme court decision. Wayne explains the differences between PACs, Super PACs, and Leadership PACs, and emphasizes the importance of looking for donor motivations and spending patterns. Wayne concludes by sharing some of the best places to start digging for campaign finance data.
In this week’s episode, Megan Calcote compiles some of the databases and tips for using them that were shared during Reynolds Week 2016. The speakers highlighted are Steve Doig, data journalist and Knight Chair in Journalism at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, and Evan Wyloge, senior reporter at the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting. They each share some of the databases you can use for your business reporting and their methods for getting the most out of that data.
Welcome to Season 3 of How to Cover Money, presented by The Reynolds Center. This new season brings a new host, Megan Calcote, program coordinator for the Reynolds Center. This week’s episode features Christopher Waddell, an associate professor at the School of Journalism and Communication at Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario Canada, and his tips for business journalists. His tips were presented at the 2015 Canadian Association of Journalists conference.
In the Season 2 finale of How to Cover Money, co-hosts Micki Maynard and Mark Remillard take a look back at some of the best tips they got from all of the amazing journalists that joined them this season. If you missed any episodes, feel free to circle back to any of our previous episodes and, of course, keeping thinking like a business reporter!
In this episode, co-host Micki Maynard discusses the financial aspects of sports rivalries with Mark Remillard. Maynard highlights major college football and basketball rivalries, such as Michigan vs. Ohio State and Duke vs. UNC, noting the significant revenue generated from these matchups, as an example of how business journalists can cover the sports world. She also gives some thoughts on how young journalists can use social media, FOIA requests and city liaisons to get data and understand the financial stories of sports beyond what’s being played on the field.
Co-hosts Micki Maynard and Mark Remillard talk with Marilyn Geewax, an editor at NPR. Geewax gives her thoughts on the importance of impact in stories and how news from all around the world and the nation can impact your local readers. Geewax gives advice to journalists on how to find their next story, what websites are goldmines of information, and how to interpret the data for your reader.
In this week’s episode, co-hosts Micki Maynard and Mark Remillard pivot get an editor’s point of view. Kim Quillen, the East Valley Editor of The Arizona Republic, shares her approach to business journalism and details her experience covering historic events like Hurricane Katrina and the BP oil spill. As an editor, Quillen highlights some of the common mistakes she sees from reporters and how reporters can avoid them. With business journalism ever-evolving, Quillen gives her insights for young reporters to break into the field and why they should.
This episode, co-hosts Micki Maynard and Mark Remillard spend more time talking with long-time technology journalist and journalism professor, Dan Gillmor. Gillmor gives his personal experience on the dos and don’t of covering technology, including what journalists should look out for. The co-hosts asked Gillmor for advice on how young journalists can get started in the field and how to balance covering a company that may be an integral part of your daily life, like Apple and Google, with journalistic integrity.
In this episode, co-hosts Micki Maynard and Mark Remillard spend some time talking with long-time technology journalist and journalism professor, Dan Gillmor. They discuss the complexities of covering technology as a business journalist and explore the implications of technology in daily life, including the control of data, the impact of net neutrality, and the rise of centralized tech giants like Amazon and Taco Bell. The conversation touches on the potential future implications of automation and artificial intelligence on employment and society.
This week’s How to Cover Money episode discusses reporting on millennials and their financial behavior. Graduate assistant and student of the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication Rian Bosse, a millennial himself, joins co-hosts Micki Maynard and Mark Remillard to discuss the themes he has come across while reporting on millennials.
Writing a business story for broadcast is tricky, as your audience may be distracted with other things in their lives. So your delivery style is different from traditional print journalism. In this week’s How to Cover Money podcast, co-hosts Micki Maynard and Mark Remillard talk with senior business reporter, Ben Bergman from KPCC Los Angeles about how to cover business journalism as broadcasters. Ben Bergman of KPCC grapples with a unique issue covering business for broadcast. “We’re always told in radio, ‘don’t use any numbers. Take the numbers out of your story.’ And of course what is business about but numbers?” asks Bergman. “So the challenge is having enough numbers to have the heft of your story, but also make it interesting.”
At some time during their careers, almost every journalist is sure to run into a situation involving an elected official, a candidate, and funding. It could be the money that the official is spending on the job. Or, it could be the funds that a candidate is raising and spending. In this week’s episode of How to Cover Money, co-hosts Micki Maynard and Mark Remillard discuss the complexities of covering money in politics, especially with the rising costs of campaigns and the rise of Super PACs. They cover the importance of understanding the legislative process and the role lobbyists play in shaping political outcomes.
Sports can be a tricky beat, because so many journalists focus on the teams and the outcomes of the games, and miss the vast sums of money that surround professional and college sports. Sports business coverage is critical to understanding the role agents, managers and stadium financing have not only on the game itself, but the local community and fans. In this week’s episode co-hosts Micki Maynard and Mark Remillard discuss the business side of sports, emphasizing the importance of covering sports finance. They highlight tips and insights from Jon Paul Morosi of Fox Sports and the MLB Network who is an expert on sports transactions.
This episode looks at a subject that is likely to come up with young journalists: interviewing the owners of small businesses. Co-hosts Micki Maynard and Mark Remillard discuss the importance of interviewing small business owners, highlighting the significant role their businesses play in the U.S. economy. With 23 million small businesses and 22 million self-employed individuals collectively creating two-thirds of jobs since the 1970s, there is a high chance you will talk to these people often as they make up the bulk of your local business community. Maynard and Remillard discuss the challenges of these interviews and how to build a network of connections to make future interviews easier.
In this episode of How to Cover Money, co-hosts Micki Maynard and Mark Remillard look at a nerve-wracking subject for many young journalists: interviewing big-name business leaders. They offer some advice on how to lay out an interview strategy, how to make the most out of short and long interviews and how to ask the super tough questions CEOs may not want to answer. The episode includes tips on making connections to get your interviewee to relax and how to effectively end the interview.
Business journalists and reporters who cover money often find themselves needing sources on short notice. In the episode, co-hosts Micki Maynard and Mark Remillard recommend where to start looking for sources and how to find people who are knowledgeable on the subject as well as accessible. In order to have a truly good story, journalists will need a range of sources from professors and analysts to company officials. It’s especially important for business journalists to not only find diverse sources but be wary about returning to the same source over and over again to keep their reporting fresh.
This episode of How to Cover Money covers the art form of asking questions. Although it may take a while to learn, co-hosts Micki Maynard and Mark Remillard make it clear that any reporter can learn how to ask “good dumb questions” during interviews to get the information you most want to report on and make your reporting understandable for your audience.
Broadcast writing brings unique challenges for reporters and can, at first, seem intimidating for newcomers to branch into. In this episode, co-hosts Micki Maynard and Mark Remillard discuss successful tips and strategies for reporting business stories specifically for a broadcast audience, how that may differ from traditional print media, and how to keep all those numbers interesting to the audience on air. Whether you’re working for radio, TV, or creating your own podcast, this episode is sure to give you some practical tools to do your job well.
In this episode co-hosts Micki Maynard and Mark Remillard discuss the elements of writing compelling business feature stories. They give advice on what aspects to focus on and how to organize a story in order to maintain reader engagement. They also note the importance of being ready to cast a wider net, or follow a different direction than you originally intended to based on the interviews you are having.
In this episode, co-hosts Micki Maynard and Mark Remillard discuss strategies for reporters to generate story ideas to keep their editors happy. If you’re a reporter who is experiencing “story block” this episode will give you a range of ideas to help you break out of your slump and keep those stories generating time and time again.
Reynolds Director Micheline Maynard and co-host Mark Remillard of KTAR News in Phoenix offer tips on ways to find the money in any story, even if you aren’t a business journalist. The two discuss the importance of not letting numbers scare you from covering money stories. You don’t need advanced math skills to find out where the money is in any type of story, simple addition and subtraction will get you started. They give tips on speaking the “secret language” that is money and how to translate it for a wide audience, as well as the importance of never being afraid to ask “the good, dumb question.”
Two Minute Tips
Every Tuesday we send out a quick-read email with tips for business journalism. Sign up now and get one Tuesday.
