2003 News: API Gets $3 million For Business Journalism Training

API Gets $3 million From Reynolds Foundation for Business Journalism Training

By Philip Moeller
The Donald William Reynolds Foundation is giving nearly $3 million to the American Press Institute to create a national center for business journalism.

“Reporters covering everything from the arts to sports to the local or national business communities need to have basic business and financial understandings,” API President William L. Winter said, “and the new Reynolds Center will build first-rate programs to help journalists develop those skills.”

The grant includes $1.45 million to put on 60 one-day seminars for business journalists during each of the next three years, with three workshops held at each of 20 locations.

API was also awarded $1.47 million to build and operate an online resource for business journalists that will include resource lists, a library of business terms and processes, an archive of award-winning business journalism and forums for interactive discussions of industry issues.

The grant has a direct impact on SABEW and follows other business-journalism grants that Reynolds has made in recent years.

A grant to the Southern Newspaper Publishers Foundation has funded a series of 10 business-journalism workshops in 2002 and again in 2003, which have been run for SNPA by Marty Steffens, who holds the SABEW Chair or Business and Financial Journalist at the University of Missouri.

Reynolds also endowed a chair in business journalism at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, VA, which is currently filled by Pam Luecke, a long-time SABEW member.

API has already initiated discussions with SABEW about possibly retaining it to manage the new series of seminars, but no decision has been made.

To guide development of the center, Reynolds funded a research project conducted in 2001 and 2002 by Selzer & Co., based in Des Moines. More than 1,000 business executives (500), journalism educators (34), newspaper executives (301) and business journalists (202) were polled on their opinions about the state of business journalism. Additional, in-depth interviews were conducted with 19 journalism and business-school deans at 11 schools with substantial journalism programs, including Kansas, Maryland, Missouri, North Carolina and the University of Southern California.

The results highlighted known weakness in business journalism:
*** Business executives said business journalists didn’t know enough about business, resulting in unsophisticated stories and shallow story execution. They did not have problems with accuracy or bias in coverage.
*** Newsroom executives said business journalism generally was their lowest coverage priority, and even business journalists did not compare themselves favorably with their newsroom peers.
*** Journalism deans said their schools did a poor or non-existent job of training business journalists, particularly at the undergraduate level. Students tend not to develop an interest in business coverage until they are in the workplace, many respondents said, making mid-career training particularly appropriate.

It should be noted that the polling is dated, occurring mostly in 2001. And it also includes heavy participation by smaller newspapers, and the results are often different for small papers than metro dailies. Complete research results are available at the API site and are currently accessible off of http://www.americanpressinstitute.org/news.cfm?id=880.
The foundation was begun in 1954 by Reynolds, who founded and owned the Donrey Media Group, which included newspapers, outdoor advertising and cable television properties. The company was sold after Reynolds’ death in 1993, providing a substantial infusion into the foundation. It had assets of nearly $1 billion at the end of 2001.

Moeller, a former SABEW president, recently sold his dot-com (insure.com) and is doing consulting.