Make It Great

Using chat or a call center to help your audience

2009-10-13T16:11:00.000-07:00

Personal finance writer Harriet Johnson Brackey of the Sun Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., helped set up a call center and online chat to give readers access to eight financial-planning experts. The result was a full-page Sunday Q&A, online questions, blog entries and an opportunity to hear from about 400 readers, she says.

“People need help. They don’t have a lot of places to go to get objective advice,” Harriet says.

As part of Financial Planning Week Oct. 5-11, the local association of financial planners wanted to do a community service project. Harriet suggested its members come into the newsroom to take reader calls for three hours. She says reporters and editors willingly gave up their desks around lunchtime to make it happen.

Today’s Tip: Set up a call center and/or take advantage of online chat with experts to answer your audience’s questions about personal finance or the economy.

In the Web 2.0 world, audience members are seeking a relationship with news outlets. Technology makes it easier than ever to engage them in a dialogue with you and with outside experts.

“When you think about the decisions you have to make in your life, your readers have to make them, too. Instead of preaching about economics, get right in there next to the reader [and ask], ‘What resources can I bring to that?’” she says.

Harriet says some may see the project as advocacy, but she sees it as addressing an issue that hundreds of readers have.

Using humor to humanize

2009-10-12T13:21:00.000-07:00

Diane Cardwell of The New York Times wrote a commercial real estate story that offers another look at people benefiting during the recession: artists getting free or cheap space as landlords seek to avoid empty spaces. The story says:

These “pop-up galleries,” as they are known in Britain, where the phenomenon is already well established, are increasingly taking hold in New York as development advocates and landlords struggle to keep up appearances where commerce and construction have stalled.

The demand among landlords is so high that Chashama, a group that has been working for almost 15 years to find vacant real estate for visual and performing artists, no longer has to go looking. Its founder, Anita Durst, said she gets calls every day from landlords asking her to find art projects for them. Some even offer to cover basic expenses like electricity.

The story offers a variety of voices, which makes it more interesting. For example, Diane provides an exchange between two barbers who work near one of the art exhibits:

His co-worker, James Tucker, said it was, “different, cultural-wise,” saying that he liked some of the artwork on display but that he found Mr. Chang’s road-kill project “really creepy.”

Junior added, laughing, “He should do a Halloween thing with that.”

Today’s Tip: Don’t be afraid to add humor and voices from non-stakeholders to your stories.

As the Barlett and Steele Award winners noted recently, stories need people. Quotes like the ones noted above bring life – and humor – to stories.

Finding Real People -- How Barlett & Steele Award Winners Did It

2009-10-09T15:28:00.000-07:00

Gary Cohn and Darrell Preston wrote a piece for Bloomberg Markets magazine investigating the fees that AARP collects on members’ insurance policies. The article won the silver award and $2,000 in the Reynolds Center’s third annual Barlett & Steele Awards for Investigative Business Journalism this week.

The story leads with Arthur Laupus’ story:

Laupus stumbled onto something that many members of the world’s largest seniors’ organization don’t know: The group, formerly called American Association of Retired Persons, collects hundreds of millions of dollars annually from insurers who pay for AARP’s endorsement of their policies.

The insurance companies build the cost of these so-called royalties and fees, which amounted to $497.6 million in 2007, into the premiums they charge AARP members, according to AARP’s consolidated financial statement for that year.

Darrell says he got the tip about the AARP fees while reporting on another insurance industry story. He and Gary teamed up, did some comparison-shopping and then realized the hard part: finding people, Darrell says.

While at The Philadelphia Inquirer, Gary learned from Don Barlett and Jim Steele -- for whom the award is named -- that you need to bring the impact of investigative stories home with human examples.

“It’s important to have all of the good details,” Gary says. “Also, it’s really important to have real people in stories. That’s what takes a lot of extra time.”

Today’s Tip: Use LexisNexis, a searchable database that many media outlets pay to access, to find sources in the “Letters to the Editor” section of publications.

Darrell and Gary searched LexisNexis for letters from people complaining about AARP. Many of the authors were listed in online phone directories.

Darrell says they also talked with brokers who knew of clients who’d comparison-shopped for insurance. They found Laupus through a source and learned that he had kept voluminous records, Gary says.

“He was the perfect case study because of the interviews and the detailed paper trail.”

For a tip from The Miami Herald reporters who won the top gold award in the Barlett & Steele Awards for Investigative Business Journalism, please click here. For more information on Barlett and Steele, as well as advice from last year's winners, please click here.

Tracking criminals in the mortgage biz -- how Barlett & Steele winners did it

2009-10-08T11:55:00.000-07:00

Miami Herald reporters Jack Dolan, Matt Haggman and Rob Barry produced a series called, “Borrowers Betrayed,” in January that “found that the state had licensed over a thousand convicted felons as mortgage brokers and had allowed two thousand felons to work as unlicensed loan originators.” That series won the top gold award and $5,000 in the Reynolds Center’s third annual Barlett & Steele Awards for Investigative Business Journalism this week.

Part One of the series says:

State regulators allowed thousands of ex-convicts to enter a profession that gave them access to the most sensitive and personal financial information: credit cards, bank accounts and Social Security numbers.

Those criminals went on to commit nearly $85 million in mortgage fraud, the newspaper found. They stole their customers' identities. They stole their money. They even stole their homes.

The team’s eight-month investigation started after visiting a mortgage broker. The broker bragged about being able to sell all types of loans, and his backroom call center raised red flags for Jack and Matt.

“We half-jokingly checked his criminal background,” Jack said. The check revealed drug and financial crimes, which led the two to ask: “If he can get a license, who else can?”

That revelation, plus a designation for Florida as the No. 1 state for mortgage fraud, made them want to pursue the story.

"A lot of reporting had been done at the top of the food chain on Wall Street, but we wanted to get to the bottom,” Matt says. “The mortgage-broker people were coming face-to-face with the victims.”

Jack says, “The database [of 222,844 Florida mortgage professionals] was the world’s greatest tip sheet, but it took a tremendous amount of shoe leather.” Some of that leather was worn while tracking convicted bank robbers late at night, they say.

Today’s Tips: Realize that once you have the data, there’s still a lot of reporting to do, Jack and Matt say. Also, make sure all of the reporters on a project can work together as a team.

The trio worked together on the reporting, and each wrote one installment of the three-day series. Each part carried all three bylines.

Tomorrow: How did Barlett & Steele silver award winners Gary Cohn and Darrell Preston of Bloomberg Markets magazine investigate the endorsement fees charged by AARP that resulted in higher insurance costs for seniors?

Seek Source Diversity

2009-10-06T16:13:00.000-07:00

Mitchell Hartman of American Public Media’s Marketplace Money offers listeners a piece that focuses on people who aren’t showing up on the standard unemployment numbers because they’ve given up on the job search.

Mitchell ‘s segment includes the voices of a 54 year old, a 28 year old and an ex-convict.

“Of course, in a recession this deep, unemployment doesn't discriminate,"Mitchell said."Some who've barely gotten into the job market have already dropped out.”

Today’s Tip: Diversify your sources, especially when covering economic issues that affect everyone.

While social media sites like Twitter have helped expand our source searches, you still need traditional pavement pounding to ensure your story captures a variety of people. As a Business Insider piece pointed out, different sites attract different audiences.

For more tips on diversifying sources, check out this handout from No Train No Gain, which offers resources for newsroom trainers.

Use the data as a stepping stone

2009-10-05T14:32:00.000-07:00

Matthew Preusch of The Oregonian found a story that combined two trends – green and bicycling – to produce a story about businesses using bicycles to save on gasoline costs.

Preusch tied the story to recent Census Bureau stats about bicycling commuters as his news peg then offered a twist:

'Last week new federal figures confirmed what many already knew: Portland has the highest percentage of bike commuters among large cities.

But what those Census statistics don't show is the way bikes are being used on the job, not just to get to and from them.'

Today’s Tip: Sometimes the story is what the data doesn’t show.

The Oregonian produced a short story about the data release itself. Matthew’s article incorporated a community trend to make the story more local and interesting.

Getting a jump on the followup story

2009-10-02T13:39:00.000-07:00

Colin Barr of Fortune magazine followed Ken Lewis’s retirement announcement on Wednesday with a story about Lewis’s potential retirement pay.

It starts:

"Ken Lewis doesn't have a golden parachute, but he's all set for a comfortable landing -- unlike his long-suffering shareholders.
The Bank of America chief executive officer said Wednesday he'll step aside at year-end after eight years at the helm. Based on the company's most recent proxy statement, he will have $53 million in pension benefits waiting for him when he leaves."

Today’s Tip: Start thinking about the follow up story when you’re working on the big news story.

Other news outlets wrote about possible successors as well as the legal battles that lay ahead for Lewis and Bank of America.

By focusing on retirement income, Colin provided a unique perspective on the CEO’s departure. He found the data using proxy statements.

More:
Keep your eyes out for proxy statements, by Rosland Gammon

Proxy Digging, by Chris Roush

Put yourself on the marijuana beat

2009-10-01T14:31:00.000-07:00

Covering Marijuana as Business

Trish Regan of CNBC offers a business look at California’s marijuana industry as part of a segment called Marijuana Inc. Inside America’s Pot Industry. The segment notes that “What Kansas is to wheat, Mendocino County is to marijuana.”

Trish covers the industry from the growers’ and sellers’ perspectives while also focusing on the criminal aspect.

Today’s Tip: There’s a good story behind most every business, even the “nontraditional” ones.

Trish’s segment is more than 40 minutes and provides a thorough overview of the California industry. The challenge is usually finding the people, which social networking sites make easier to do.

Racquel Rutledge took a similar look at people scamming the state out of childcare funds with her series called "Cashing in On Kids" for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Her series illustrated the process parents and providers followed to bilk the state out of thousands of dollars.

Engage readers with interactive charts, graphics

2009-09-30T15:25:00.000-07:00

BBC News reporter Steve Schifferes’ story about bailout spending offers interactive graphics and words to explain how the United States and the United Kingdom have spent the most.

New calculations by the BBC, based on IMF data given to G20 finance ministers, shows these countries have spent a total of $10 trillion (£6tn).
The UK and US spent the most, with the UK spending far more, 94% of its GDP compared to 25% in the US.
That equates to £30,000 per person in the UK and $10,000 in the US.

Seven interactive slides help tell the story before readers even get to the article.

Today’s Tip: Use interactive tools to illustrate your story.

Graphics help reach readers and viewers who won’t get to the end of your story. Yet for those who do, you'll want to make sure your story isn’t just a rehash of the visual data.

For more information on ways to use graphics, read this 2001 article by Joanne Miller of the Charlotte Observer. She details how the paper created its graphics packages following 9/11.

Ask the hard questions

2009-09-29T16:33:00.000-07:00

Fortune contributor David A. Kaplan’s profile of Charlie Rose offers a lively look at the interviewer.

At Table No. 1 at Michael's, the best seats on the silly power-lunch circuit in Midtown Manhattan, Charlie Rose is holding forth in fabulousness. America's tallest, handsomest, best-connected, most inquisitive, most talkative late-night TV interviewer is greeting media princess Tina Brown and her husband, Sir Harold Evans.
There's Christie Hefner, resplendent in all white, who waves as she arrives, as does Jeff Greenfield of CBS. Charlie barely has time to enjoy his $34 roasted free-range chicken (with natural jus).

But the article isn’t afraid explore the issue of the show’s sponsors. The story even says Fortune contacted all of the show’s underwriters.

The fundraising produces a web of peculiar interconnections between Rose and the people he covers. The foundation of media mogul Barry Diller and fashion designer Diane von Fürstenberg is a longtime supporter of the program, most recently in the amount of $200,000. Both Diller and von Fürstenberg have been on the show. So has Rupert Murdoch, overlord of News Corp., which is a Charlie Rose underwriter.

Today’s Tip: Don’t be afraid to tackle the delicate issues in business profiles.

Business profiles require the same balance as other stories. You have to cover the tough questions even if the person is well liked. Start off by being upfront about your intentions to produce a balanced piece. Do your research before your interview and schedule a follow-up conversation to be sure you’ve covered all of the angles.

Don't forget the human side of business stories

2009-09-28T13:47:00.000-07:00

John Schmid of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel found a human angle to help tell the tale of the final chapter of a Milwaukee company.

Nearly 10,000 people once worked at the sprawling ruins known to some as the former A.O. Smith industrial site, to others as the deathbed of Tower Automotive.
Now it is down to a single worker, Rich Wendling. Wendling learned recently that his final shift comes in November, following the City of Milwaukee's decision to buy the mothballed property and create an industrial park.

John says he has covered the industrial site since 2004 as part of the ongoing story of Milwaukee’s industrial history. He maintained sources and was able to tell the story of the site's final days through the story of Rich Wendling.

Today’s Tip, as John says: “It makes no sense to do economics reporting in a vacuum that relies on statistics. Good econ reporting is both social, human and global.”

By talking to a person with whom most readers could identify, John made the story more accessible to a wide variety of readers. By intertwining Rich Wendling’s history and the company’s history, he helped draw a vivid picture of the impact the site had on the city and the employees.

Combining trends and tips

2009-09-25T13:59:00.000-07:00

Stephanie Rosenbloom of The New York Times offers a strong trend story on coupon clipping.

Thanks to the miserable economy, coupons — like board games and family dinners around the kitchen table — have made a comeback. The recession has even made coupon clippers out of some groups that once avoided them, including well-to-do and young shoppers.

The story offers examples of the hard-working coupon clippers who pay pennies on the dollars for their groceries while also offering consumer tips and a wealth of data on who’s clipping these days.

Today’s Tip: Integrate consumer stories and trend pieces to create interesting and useful reads.

Readers want tips, and they want to be in the know. By integrating the two concepts, as Stephanie has done, you can offer an appealing story that includes a “you can do it, too” element.

Take data to the ground level

2009-09-24T16:03:00.000-07:00

Jonathan Karl of ABC News and Thomas Frank of USA Today tracked how the federal government has spent money on small airports that see few passengers.

Jonathan’s segment looks at stimulus funding used for commercial airports that provide fewer than five flights a day. His story singles out the Ouzinkie Airport in Alaska, which he says “hit the stimulus jackpot with $15 million. That’s $100,000 for each of the town’s 150 residents -- even though there’s another airport just 30 minutes away.”

Thomas’ article focuses on the Airport Improvement Program, which offers federal funding to general aviation airports that serve only private planes. He notes in his story that the money used on the commercial airports comes from taxes on all airplane-ticket sales.

The taxes can add up to 15% to the cost of a flight — or about $29 to a $200 round-trip ticket.
Federal lawmakers have used some of the money to build and maintain the world's most expansive and expensive network of airports — 2,834 of them nationwide — with no scheduled passenger flights. Known as general-aviation airports, they operate separately from the 139 well-known commercial airports that handle almost all passenger flights.
In the first full accounting of the 28-year-old Airport Improvement Program, USA TODAY found that Congress has directed $15 billion to general-aviation airports, which typically are tucked on country roads and industrial byways.

Today’s Tip: Take data to the ground level.

By gathering details and seeing the airports in action, the reporters were able to put together stories showing how the money was misspent.

The USAToday story includes an interactive map that allows viewers to click on symbols for each individual U.S. airport and see how much air traffic and federal money it has received.

If you’d like to look at stimulus funding in your area, check out this piece from W.J. Hennigan to help you track stimulus spending. You can also review the archived live blog of the Reynolds Center’s Sept. 21 workshop in Dallas with New York Times reporter Ron Nixon on the topic. Nixon will also be teaching how to track stimulus funds at a free Reynolds Center workshop in New Orleans on Nov. 9. For more information or to register, please click here. To participate in the live blog of that workshop, go to www.BusinessJournalism.org on Nov. 9.

Bringing data to life

2009-09-23T15:35:00.000-07:00

Rico Gagliano of American Public Media’s “Marketplace Money” used a report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland to create a segment questioning how two seemingly similar areas could have such dramatically different foreclosure rates.

North Collinwood's rate in 2007? Almost 21 percent. Braddock's? 5 percent. Both places should have been equally hit by foreclosures, but the Ohio community got hit harder.

Today’s Tip: Use additional sources to bring data from agencies such as the Federal Reserve alive.

Rico adds the human element by driving us around a neighborhood with him to see what the data means. He also focused the segment by citing only the foreclosure rates, although the Federal Reserve report offers lots of numbers.

Also of note, the same show aired a segment illustrating the ripple effect of reduced spending by Cleveland consumers. Dan Bobkoff shows how the loss of the father's job affected one family’s spending at individual businesses. The lesson: follow the money.

Documents needn't mean bland

2009-09-22T15:52:00.000-07:00

BusinessWeek journalists Paul Barrett, Jack Ewing and Brian Grow detail handgun maker Glock’s success, legal battles and an assassination attempt in a story based heavily on legal documents and other paper sources. The nut graf, which comes after the company’s history is established, says:

Behind the Glock phenomenon, however, is another story, one rife with intrigue and allegations of wrongdoing. The company's hidden history raises questions about its taxpayer-financed law-and-order franchise. Is this a company that deserves the patronage of America's police?

The Sept. 10 cover story, which spans seven online pages, flows well despite having few direct quotes from interviews.

Today’s Tip: Articles driven by quotations from documents versus those from live interviews don’t have to be boring. Use your storytelling skills to craft stories that keep readers intrigued.

To help you do this, check out tips from the Nieman Conference on Narrative Journalism last year. The big point attendees cited was the need for details, which is what Paul, Jack and Brian give readers in the Glock piece. For instance, in describing the attempted assassination, they say:

…Glock [then 70] was attacked in an underground garage. The hit man, a former professional wrestler and French Legionnaire named Jacques Pecheur, bashed the businessman on the head with a rubber mallet, a technique apparently aimed at making it look like the victim had fallen down and fatally injured himself. Glock, physically fit from daily swimming—often in the frigid lake abutting his home near Klagenfurt, Austria—fought back. When police arrived, they found Glock bleeding from gashes to his skull. Pecheur, 67, was unconscious.

In this podcast interview, Paul tells how he got onto the story and how he got such good information from legal documents on this private, foreign firm.

When you’ve got a good story, tell it

2009-09-21T15:13:00.000-07:00

Washington Post reporter Steve Hendrix found an unconventional group to tell the tale of the recession: courier bikers. His story about the decline in messengers because of the economy, technology and 9/11 begins with this image-laden lede:

Getting a meticulously prepared legal brief to a courthouse or federal agency on time used to require a bit of comic-book valor. Just before deadline, exhausted lawyers handed off the document to a character in the tight Lycra of a superhero, the shoulder bag of a Pony Express rider and the bulging thighs of an athlete. One of Washington's legions of bicycle messengers would then dart through perilous traffic and any weather to deliver the goods in the nick of time.

The story sings with quotes such as "This last week, I set a personal best for futility: I sat out here for seven hours and made $25," [said Andy Zalan, a longtime bike messenger and head of the D.C. Bicycle Couriers Association]. Steve also paints pictures with phrases such as “six men who looked as if they'd been taxidermied by Brooks Brothers.”

Today’s Tip: Especially when you’ve got an offbeat story, tell it in a colorful way. Use imagery and great quotes to bring it alive.

Steve’s story offers humor while looking at an industry – not known to fit the norm – in trouble.

Put yourself in the readers' place

2009-09-18T17:38:00.001-07:00

Several news outlets have taken on bank fees for debit cards in the past few weeks as outrage over the fees rises. Ron Lieber and Andrew Martin of The New York Times tackled the issue with a series called The Card Game. Their first story looks at how much banks earn when consumers overspend.

According to the F.D.I.C. study, a $27 overdraft fee that a customer repays in two weeks on a $20 debit purchase would incur an annual percentage rate of 3,520 percent. By contrast, penalty interest rates on credit cards generally run about 30 percent.

The series, a tag-team effort with PBS’s "Frontline," offers videos, charts and primers for consumers to avoid fees.

Today’s Tip: Don’t forget the tips for consumers.

A majority of readers probably identified with the anecdotes cited in the story. Instead of leaving them in the amen corner, the package offers practical information for readers to avoid the fees and other resources – something many news articles omit.

As former business copy desk chief Jim Moffatt used to remind us at The Philadelphia Inquirer, PYIRP, or Put Yourself in the Readers’ Place.

Finding stories in the fine print

2009-09-16T15:51:00.000-07:00

Using documents available from the Securities and Exchange Commission, Del Jones of USA Today crafted a story about how public companies have increased spending on security for CEOs while cutting other costs.

Starbucks, which has laid off workers, closed stores and switched from whole to 2% milk to save pennies a gallon, bumped its spending to $511,079 last year on the personal and home security of CEO Howard Schultz. FedEx, which quit matching employee 401(k) contributions, spent $595,875 on the security of CEO Fred Smith. Walt Disney spent $645,368 for CEO Robert Iger; Occidental Petroleum spent $575,407 for Ray Irani; and McKesson spent $401,706 for John Hammergren.

Top execs usually get more death threats when layoffs and closures occur, the story says.

Today’s Tip: Keep your eyes out for proxy statements, also known as DEF 14A. These statements provide details about CEO compensation and benefits. You can see the latest filings at http://secwatch.com or http://www.sec.gov/edgar.shtml.

For instance, Sara Lee Corp. filed its proxy on Wednesday. Along with disclosing CEO Brenda Barnes’ total compensation for fiscal 2009 of $15.2 million, it also notes that the company has discontinued the use of its corporate jet.

A great watchdog of the footnotes in SEC documents is Michelle Leder, who shares what she finds on her blog at www.footnoted.org. Until earlier this year, she also did a blog for BusinessJournalism.org called Under the Magnifying Glass. She is the author of the 2003 book, Financial Fine Print: Uncovering a Company's True Value.

How to write with authority

2009-09-15T12:56:00.000-07:00

For his anniversary piece on the collapse of Lehman Bros., Stevenson Jacobs of The Associated Press wrote about what hasn’t changed:

That Wall Street is making money again in essentially the same ways that thrust the banking system into chaos last fall is reason for concern on several levels, financial analysts and government officials say.

Adam Davidson and Alex Blumberg of NPR reported a “Morning Edition” segment on how difficult it is to merge regulatory agencies – although virtually everyone acknowledges there are too many financial regulators:

Economists say this kind of problem stems from regulatory arbitrage. When more than one regulator oversees the same kind of activity, financial firms find ways to play one off against the other. It's like what every 4-year-old has figured out — if Mommy won't let you, maybe Daddy will. Or worse, if Mommy thinks Daddy is watching you, and Daddy thinks Mommy is watching you, then you can get away with anything.

Both pieces illustrate the in-depth reporting that allows the authors to write with authority.

Today’s Tip: To write with authority, report, report, report.

“When you write with authority -- with a knowledge of your topic and an awareness of how it connects to other topics -- your storytelling becomes credible,” according to this Poynter Online report of author Susan Eaton’s presentation at the 2002 Nieman Conference on Narrative Journalism.

Eaton notes that context plus crystallization equals authority. Crystallization is “the art of finding and presenting the person, place, or moment that somehow exemplifies your broader theme,” according to the report.

Another key to writing authoritatively is to stick to active “Anglo-Saxon” verbs and avoid the passive voice, according to this brief video of Alan Pike, teaching at Cornell University.

The best views aren't just from the penthouse

2009-09-14T17:49:00.000-07:00

Kai Ryssdal of Marketplace offered a segment, carried on many public radio stations, about the financial crisis that, as one listener commented, “brought the issues to a more understandable, personal level.”

Today’s Tip: Add a micro dimension to make macroeconomic stories more useful for your audience.

For this Lehman Bros. anniversary piece, Kai focused on people at both ends of the financial spectrum: Millicent “Mama” Hill, whose Los Angeles home was foreclosed upon after she took out a subprime loan she couldn’t repay, and John Chrin, a former Wall Street executive turned college instructor. Then, to provide context, he added in experts on the financial crisis, the psychology of financial decision-making and the financial trust index.

“Excellent, excellent piece,” wrote listener Zaid Hassan of Austin, Texas. “Spellbinding to be reminded that, in the end, it really is just a piece of paper,” Hassan said, referring to the central thesis of the report: Without trust in the financial system, a dollar is really just a piece of paper.

A picture worth a two-parter – and a prize

2009-09-11T14:03:00.000-07:00

A photo in The Seattle Times of landslides led its reporters Hal Bernton and Justin Mayo to look behind what caused the landslides – and the resulting $57 million in damage from them and the concomitant floods -- earning them and photographer Steve Ringman the James V. Risser Prize for Western Environmental Journalism.

Today’s Tip: Photographs and photojournalists often can offer great tips worth additional investigation. If something looks suspicious, check it out.

Their two-part series, which published in July 2008, looked at the role Weyerhaeuser played in the December 2007 landslides. As The Times wrote in announcing the award on Sept. 8:

Using software to map the impacts of clear-cutting by the timber company Weyerhaeuser, they found that such massive removal of trees in one harvest region accounted for one-third of landslides there.

The project "stood out for its ambition, its persistence and its compelling conclusions," one judge wrote. "The combination of computer-assisted reporting and strong interviews offered a template that should be used for journalists covering timber controversies and other land-use debates across the West."

The Times explains how it did the research comparing clear-cut areas to landslide sites, which undergirded the series and resulted in a very cool interactive map.

Standing up to a legal challenge

2009-09-10T11:04:00.000-07:00

Ben Popken and Meg Marco of The Consumerist blog haven't let a lawsuit stop them from investigating Cash4Gold.com, a Florida company that promoted its scrap-gold-buying business in a Super Bowl ad featuring rapper MC Hammer. Their report says:

We believe citizens, consumers, and employees should be able to exercise their free-speech rights online – and journalists should be able to report on those efforts – without fear of intimidation.

Today’s Tip: Make sure your story can withstand legal challenge by triple-checking your facts, and have contentious stories reviewed by your lawyer before publication.

Ben and Meg report that they talked with numerous sources including former employees, customers, the Better Business Bureau, the Pompano Beach fire department and the U.S. Postal Service. They also researched Web sites, legal documents, complaints to the Florida Attorney General and public records, providing links to much of what they found. They also detail their unsuccessful efforts to get an interview with the company’s CEO.

In addition, The Consumerist, which is a scion of the publisher of Consumer Reports, indicates it did original research using “Consumer Reports’ ‘mystery shoppers’ – the nationwide team of anonymous consumers who help buy the gear that our parent company tests. The mystery shoppers sent 24 identical gold pendants and chains to Cash4Gold and some of its national competitors. The necklaces were purchased for $175 each. We calculated their 'melt value' – meaning how much the raw gold was worth – as about $70 each, based on the market price for gold when the necklaces were received by the companies.”

What were the results?

Cash4Gold sent back checks ranging from $7.60 to $12.72 (or 11% to 18% of melt value), the lowest amounts of any firm. But others weren't far behind: GoldKit offered $7.81 to $20.59, and GoldPaq, $8.22 to $13.11. Each of those deals was worse than what our mystery shoppers could get at local jewelers and pawn shops, which offered anywhere from $25 to $50. The results reinforce advice we've offered before, which is that consumers should not use these highly marketed services because the payments they offer are too low.

Looking for chicken biscuits

2009-09-09T13:51:00.000-07:00

Tanya Ott of WBHM public radio in Birmingham showed the aftermath of a company closure in Wadley, Ala. Her segment offers suspense and a bit of a twist: The patio-furniture company closed because of an accounting scandal – not slumping sales.

The segment has wonderful details – Bonnie’s Country Kitchen no longer delivers chicken biscuits to the shuttered Meadowcraft Inc. plant. It paints a picture of the small town and helps listeners understand the repercussions of the closure.

Today’s Tip: In the midst of an ongoing news story, look for examples that don’t fit the mold and report them with vivid detail.

Tanya’s story reminds us that the recession isn’t the only one-eyed monster hurting businesses.

Relate, create, innovate: New ways to tell a story

2009-09-08T15:51:00.000-07:00

David Kempa, a reporter for News21, a summer reporting project where writers set out to define innovation, traveled to the Mexican border and into southern Mexico and produced a three-part piece that looks closely at economic conditions in the area.

As you scroll through the project, the graphic elements at the top of the page help drive the users' navigation through the story.

Today’s Tip: Redefine storytelling. The Internet provides ample space for photos, videos, words and graphics. Take advantage of the opportunity to engage your audience and help them connect to your stories even more.

As reporters, look for ways to integrate multimedia elements into your stories. For instance, Joe Drape, the horse-racing reporter for The New York Times, provided a video looking at the fates of older racehorses.

Called “Where Do Racehorses Go?” it lasts 7 minutes and 14 seconds and helps the audience connect emotionally to the story.

For tips on how to augment stories with multimedia, check out the Innovation Roundup from the News21 group.

Turn board-meeting minutes into a scoop

2009-09-04T12:12:00.000-07:00

Stella Hopkins, business enterprise reporter of The Charlotte Observer, took North Carolina’s first bank failure since 1993 and turned it into a story questioning another cause of bank failures.

Her nutgraf:

Many people share blame for the country's financial crisis, from reckless CEOs to hands-off regulators to eager borrowers. The Cape Fear (Bank) saga highlights another group – bank directors, who are charged with safeguarding their institutions and shareholders.

Stella says the story started when she noted in an SEC filing the resignation of director Davie Waggett, who’d also defaulted on loans from the bank.

“Initially, we thought this story would focus on insider lending,” she says. “Reporting led us to the realization that the focus was the directors.”

Stella reviewed more than 450 pages of board meeting minutes, which were available because the bank had failed. The minutes, which cost about $100 to photocopy, provided greater insight into the loans.

Today’s Tip: Don’t overlook board-meeting minutes as sources of information. They can give you a behind-the-scenes look at how a company is run.

Stella says reading federal reports and summaries of past bank failures also can help you better understand what to search for. Finally, she says to develop a relationship with key regulators, state and federal. “They can be a huge help, on background, to test premises,” Stella says.