The Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism has chosen 15 journalists and 15 journalism professors from around the country to participate in four days of intensive business journalism training at the Walter Cronkite School from Jan. 4 to Jan. 7.
The training is part of the Cronkite School’s annually held Reynolds Business Journalism Week and will feature seminars from top journalists and professors in the field of business journalism. Professional journalists will also learn how to analyze Securities and Exchange Commission reports and financial statements.
Chicago Sun-Times business columnist Melissa Harris said she is attending to get a better understanding of such documents.
“SEC reports can be hundreds of pages long, and I need help wading through all the numbers,” Harris said.
Another journalist attending the workshop, Jaclyn Trop, recently joined the Detroit News as a business reporter with previous experience covering politics and criminal justice.
“I am really excited to learn and figure out the answers to the questions that I’ve had about covering business,” Trop said.
Meanwhile, business journalism professors such as Marc Edge from Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas, will be learning methods for teaching an undergraduate business journalism class.
“I want to bring back some new ideas to offer our students,” Edge said.
Veteran freelance journalist and author Fara Warner is teaching a course at Michigan State University next year on entrepreneurial journalism. Warner said she was looking for something to update her business-journalism skills when she came across information for the seminar online.
“Most students, I have found, aren’t interested in business journalism,” Warner said. “I want to create a business journalism class that doesn’t make students yawn. I also want to know how I can take business concepts and apply them to my entrepreneurial journalism class. Not just so they understand how to cover business but how to become business people.”
Reynolds Week 2011 will also feature a discussion with two-time Pulitzer-winning investigative reporting duo Don Barlett and Jim Steele, along with the Reynolds Center’s Barlett and Steele Investigative Business Reporting Award 2010 recipient, Murray Waas.
The business seminar series is now in its fifth year and continues to grow, according to Reynolds Center President and ASU professor Andrew Leckey.
“We had record response this year for both of the seminars,” Leckey said. “The applications were very competitive. This is particularly exciting for the Cronkite School, as it shows we are the hub of business journalism in the U.S.”
The center funds the all-expenses-paid seminars, thanks to the foundation of the center’s namesake, Donald W. Reynolds.
The center was founded at the Cronkite School in 2003, and has since provided over 10,000 journalists with free training in business journalism.
Contact the reporter at bbackhau@asu.edu
