The IRE Resource Center is a major research library containing more than 23,250 investigative stories — both print and broadcast. Add to that more than 3,000 tipsheets from our national conferences on how to cover specific beats or do specific stories and you have a resource that no reporter or editor should be without. These stories and tipsheets are searchable online or by contacting the Resource Center directly (573-882-3364 or rescntr@ire.org) where a researcher can help you pinpoint what you need. Browse or search the tipsheet section of our library below. Logged-in members can view the tipsheets free online:
Search results for "private business" ...
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Investigating Shadowy Organizations
Whether you're investigating the CIA or a sports team, use this tipsheet from award winning reporter, Apuzzo, to cover that shadowy organization.
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Investigative Business Journalism
Cohn's detailed tipsheet discusses investigative tips and techniques for covering foundations, nonprofits and charities with examples of the types of documents and resources critical to this type of reporting - from 990s to human sources. Part 2 of the tipsheet explores investigations of private companies.
Tags: nonprofit; charity; foundation; private business; Internal Revenue Service; IRS; Form 990; 990s; consolidated financial statements; civil court; criminal court; federal agencies; FOIA
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Sports business: Investigating teams and companies that own them
Upton outlines information pertinent to covering sports - from professional teams down to high school athletics. She identifies key issues worth investigating for each category. She has also collected some miscellaneous resources that may be beneficial when covering sports.
Tags: sports; professional athletes; immigration; unions; NFL; NHL; NBA; agents; endorsements; college athletics; private school; public school; NCAA; Olympics;
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On the Beat: Covering Business
The authors list and describe useful websites for business beat reporters. The sites include social networking sites, like LinkedIn, as well as government websites, private business sites, association sites and nonprofit sites. Each listing is accompanied by an explanation of what information is available at the site and how to utilize it.
Tags: business; beat reporting; web searching; internet research; sources
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Covering Private Companies
Roush offers very comprehensive, detailed advice about covering private companies. He discusses some places to find informaton, including the Secretary of State, the courts, and UCC codes. Roush also discusses covering non-profits and financial institutions. Finally, he includes a long list of web resources that are helpful for the business beat.
Tags: beat reporting; business; corporations; public records; banks; credit unions; small business administration; consumers
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Prison Reporting: Tips, Sources and Documents
Prendergast provides tips on writing prison stories such as: where to find unusual sources, inside and outside prisons; different kinds of prison stories (medical, business and politics can all be possibilities); and information trails that may lead you to budgets, labor relations files and coroner's reports - all having to do with prisons and great starting points for stories.
Tags: Criminal justice; prisons; private prisons; health care
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Tracking business, public and private
In this tipsheet, Hopkins lists various resources that would be helpful for journalists on the business beat. He includes resources (mostly websites) for every topic from campaign-finance to non-profits and private employees.
Tags: business; corporations; internet; search engines; research; databases; public records
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Backgrounding businesses with the help of a computer
This tipsheet lists different aspects of business reporting and then gives advice about how to research them. For example, one topic is "Private Companies" and Wethe suggests going to www.hoovers.com to find information about private corporations and their executives. Other topics listed include company websites, non-profit companies, court filings and land sales.
Tags: business; beat reporting; corporations; companies; research; invisible web; search engine; stocks
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A Teaching Tool: Covering nonprofits through back doors
"Nonprofits are a great unexplored area of coverage at most media operations. They also are a great resource for teaching student reporters the basics of using financial records and governmental documents to pierce the veil of secrecy that private groups work behind. Unlike private businesses, nonprofits do have to file a public income tax return and this can be a great starting point in the teaching process."
Tags: nonprofits; investigative reporting; educator; teaching; form 990s; covering nonprofits