Author Archive for Rosland Gammon

Rosland Gammon is a former business journalist turned college instructor. Her newsroom experience includes reporting for The Philadelphia Inquirer, and reporting and editing at Bloomberg News. Gammon currently teaches communications at Alverno College in Milwaukee. Follow her daily posts. | E-mail: Rosland Gammon

BBC, ICIJ: asbestos industry ‘exporting an epidemic’ to developing world

By Rosland Gammon on Jul 30, 2010 in Best Practices, Energy | Utilities | Mining, Featured, Health care, Investigation, Story ideas

The BBC and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) investigated how a global network of lobbyists has spent nearly $100 million since the mid-1980s to preserve the market for asbestos, especially in the developing world where use of the cheap — but carcinogenic – building material is growing.
Among the key findings of their investigation:
“Despite waves of asbestos-related disease in [...]

NPR proves even a new playground can be a business story

By Rosland Gammon on Jul 29, 2010 in Best Practices, Featured, Real estate | Econ development, Story ideas

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Proving that you can find a business angle in almost any story, NPR headed to a new $7 million playground in New York for a piece on how “Imagination Playground” fits into economic development. The segment by Robert Smith says:
“Manhattan is undergoing a baby boom. And Adrian Benepe, New York’s parks commissioner, says building fancy, innovative [...]

ESPN checks eatery inspections at stadiums to find mold, slime

By Rosland Gammon on Jul 28, 2010 in Best Practices, Featured, Health care, Retail | Lifestyle, Sports, Story ideas

Take me out to the ballgame, but check the food-safety inspections first. Paula Lavigne of ESPN’s “Outside the Lines” finds some vendors at sports stadiums aren’t passing food inspections. She writes:
“ESPN’s ‘Outside the Lines’ reviewed health department inspection reports for food and beverage outlets at all 107 North American arenas and stadiums that were home [...]

The power of the folo leads LAT to high-flying city salaries

By Rosland Gammon on Jul 27, 2010 in Best Practices, Featured, Investigation, Story ideas

Just like KISS (keep it simple, stupid), this reporting tip never gets old: Follow up.
That doesn’t always mean an update. Following up can also mean checking up on new characters or following a component of a story, as the Los Angeles Times did in this story about salaries for city officials who earn two to three times [...]

NYT ‘nationalizes’ local story on outsourcing of Calif. city’s services

By Rosland Gammon on Jul 26, 2010 in Best Practices, Economy, Featured, Story ideas

David Streitfeld of The New York Times takes readers to Maywood, Calif., where the city fired all of its workers and rehired them as contractors to save money and deal with lawsuits against its police department. David writes:
“At first, people in this poor, long-troubled and heavily Hispanic city southeast of Los Angeles braced for anarchy.
Senior [...]

Award winner says no compromise of principles in trade pubs

By Rosland Gammon on Jul 23, 2010 in Best Practices, Career tips, Entrepreneurs, Featured, Health care

Freelancer Jan Greene won a second-place award from the Association of Health Care Journalists (AHCJ) for a story looking at options for small hospitals to survive. The article ran in Trustee magazine, a trade publication targeted at boards of directors for hospitals.

The story relays how solutions such as partnerships and mergers worked for other hospitals.
“In [...]

Freep sifts evidence to trace bribery scheme up corporate ladder

By Rosland Gammon on Jul 22, 2010 in Best Practices, Featured, Investigation

Jennifer Dixon of the Detroit Free Press dug through evidence collected as part of a federal investigation of city corruption to see how much Synagro Technologies executives knew about the bribery used to sway politicians into voting for a $1.2-billion contract for sludge disposal.
The story relies on wiretapping evidence to eliminate the “he said, she said,” [...]

Santa Fe Reporter honored for using public data to list the wealthy

By Rosland Gammon on Jul 21, 2010 in Basics, Best Practices, Featured, Investigation, Retail | Lifestyle, Story ideas

Corey Pein of the Santa Fe Reporter set out to find the wealthiest among Santa Fe residents using “property records, nonprofit tax returns filed with the Internal Revenue Service, philanthropic donor lists, Securities and Exchange Commission filings, private aircraft registrations with the Federal Aviation Administration, political campaign donors through the Federal Election Commission, court records [...]

PBS NewsHour looks at debt created by private-equity investments

By Rosland Gammon on Jul 20, 2010 in Best Practices, Economy, Featured, Investing | Banking

Paul Solman of PBS NewsHour continues his series, “Making $ense: Your Guide to the Economy,”by looking at private equity. Private-equity firms buy struggling companies, borrow money to improve the businesses and sell them. The story notes one problem is many such companies become laden with debt. Solman says:
“Half of the S&P-rated firms that went bankrupt [...]