Reynolds Center Workshops

More than 7,000 journalists from over 1,200 newsrooms nationwide have participated in the business journalism workshops, online seminars and online tutorials from the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism.

The Reynolds Center is funded by a grant from the Las Vegas, Nevada-based Donald W. Reynolds Foundation. Trainers have business journalism and teaching experience. Dress is casual, and open discussion of important issues affecting business journalism is encouraged.

Our first daylong workshop this year is "High-Intensity Business Coverage," touching on fundamentals of coverage such as balance sheets, SEC filings, private companies and the business in all beats. The Reynolds Center is offering a series of specialized workshops in cities across the country in 2008.

"Informative and useful," says Thomas Lee of the Star Tribune in Minneapolis who attended an "Investigative" workshop in Minneapolis. "I'm anxious to get back to the newsroom and apply this knowledge to my work."

The Reynolds Center has also held specialized workshops on Covering the Business of Sports, Entertainment, Health Care, Technology and Broadcast Business Journalism.

In addition, 10 business journalism online seminars will be held the throughout the year. These weeklong online seminars are titled "Better Business Writing," "Covering Private Companies," "Business Journalism Boot Camp," "Intermediate Business Journalism," "Personal Finance" and "Designing the Business Section."

"Reading 8Ks and 10Qs and the like can actually be exciting now," says Patrick Garmoe of The Daily Herald in Chicago who participated in an online seminar.

Those who complete three business journalism workshops or three online seminars will receive a Certificate of Completion from the Reynolds Center.

Daylong workshops begin promptly at 9 a.m. and end at 4:30 p.m. They are open not only to newspaper business reporters and editors, but also to others in the newsroom called upon to write or edit business stories from time to time. "We're offering business journalism training to all journalists" is the motto of our program.

The Reynolds Center provides curriculum, handout materials, trainers and online registration, while a variety of statewide journalism associations, publications and universities serve as hosts for the workshops.

Both the workshops and BusinessJournalism.org are funded through a $3.5 million, three-year grant from the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation. This grant followed several years of study of business journalism by the Foundation and the American Press Institute. The Foundation supports a variety of giving programs in journalism, capital grants, aging and quality of life and cardiovascular clinical research.

The Center is headquartered at Arizona State University's Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. The Cronkite School is a leading professional journalism college with 1,700 undergraduate and master’s students.

Andrew Leckey is president of the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism. For more information, contact Leckey at 602-496-9186 or andrew.leckey@businessjournalism.org.