Getting out in front of economic development news

Dan Barkin, a senior editor at The (Raleigh) News & Observer, writes Tuesday about how one of the paper’s reporters, Jonathan Cox, was able to report an economic development story before the official announcement.

Barkin writes, “One of the hardest things to do for a reporter is to get out in front of a big economic development announcement. There are two ways to do this. One way is to rely exclusively on anonymous sources. This is something that we try to avoid. You can hit the jackpot sometimes with this approach, but you can also get burned.

“The second way is to cautiously try to piece together clues that are in the public domain.

“Business writer Jonathan B. Cox used the latter approach today. His story on the front of the business section today says that an aviation company may be ready to invest $600 million in a facility at the Global TransPark.

“The clues: 1) The Economic Investment Committee, which gives out state incentives, is scheduled to meet tomorrow morning. 2) The GTP’s board is also meeting at 10 a.m. tomorrow. 3) The company, Spirit AeroSystems, based in Wichita, Kan., filed to do business in North Carolina in late April. 4) The Golden LEAF board met in private Monday to consider an ‘economic development project that will have great impact on the state of North Carolina.’ Golden LEAF is another agency with economic development incentive money.”

Read more here about how the story was written and where it was placed in Tuesday’s paper.