Categories: OLD Media Moves

Finding your footnote in journalism

Andy Shain, the business editor of The State in Columbia, S.C., writes Friday about Michelle Leder, the business journalist who founded Footnoted.org.

Shain writes, “She spoke at the journalism school’s inaugural Baldwin Business Lecture, named after retired media executive Ken Baldwin, who donated $500,000 last year for an endowment to improve financial reporting.

“Leder lost her newspaper job via e-mail while traveling in New Zealand about a decade ago. But she found success in a skill she learned in newsrooms — burrowing through the arcane, dense pages of Securities and Exchange filings.

“The paperwork contains what she called ‘non-disclosure disclosures’ about company decisions, spending and warnings.

“Her interest flared after her own investment in Qwest shares soured. Leder said her post-mortem examination of the company’s filings showed some red flags that, if spotted sooner, would have led her to sell her stock.”