The 5 best tips from reporters on some of 2011′s hottest business stories
Add these five tips to your palette of business-reporting skills. Photo by Flickr user laffy4k.
As a blogger on best practices for BusinessJournalism.org, I’ve read scores of amazing business stories, talked with more than 200 reporters and passed along lots of useful tips to you this year. So when my editor asked me to whittle that down to the five best tips, I knew I had a challenge. What follows are tips from reporters on some of the hottest, or most topical, stories of the year. It’s not an exhaustive list, but deadline calls.
Tip 1: Use tax courts to get details about publicly traded companies’ operations in your state.
Ronald J. Hansen of The Arizona Republic offered this tip based on his story about who wrote about the accumulated effects of business tax cuts.
Tip 2: Look up Fannie Mae sales in your area at the county register of deeds. Jennifer Dixon of the Detroit Free Press used this data to expose Fannie Mae’s pressure on banks to foreclose on homes – despite its public comments saying it wouldn’t.
Tip 3: In filing FOIA requests:
- Avoid the legalese in writing your requests and write the request carefully.
- Contact the staffer who will handle the request to see what parts may be problematic.
- Request agency manuals first so you can be specific about what you need and where to find it.
These tips came from Jeff Horwitz and Kate Berry, who wrote an American Banker piece about the close ties between then-FHA Commissioner David Stevens and the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA), and Michael J. Berens of the Seattle Times who won numerous awards for his piece about abuse in adult family homes.
Laura Sullivan of NPR asked this question for her three-part series examining the bail-bond industry, for which she won an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Award for excellence in broadcast journalism.
Tip 5: To write about abuses in public employee pensions:
- Figure out whether retirement-system information for individual retirees or employees is public.
- Check personal financial disclosure forms, also known as statements of economic interest, to see if a lawmaker receives a pension.
- Use Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports (CAFR) for information such as the total number of retirees and the average pension benefit.
- Search retirement-system websites for pension handbooks that will explain criteria for retirement.
- Check state laws to get benefits and other provisions for retirement.
Tom Frank of USA Today offered us these tips based on his piece exposing state lawmakers getting pensions that tripled their salaries.