Categories: OLD Media Moves

New view of company data on SEC web site

The Securities and Exchange Commission unveiled a Web site on Friday that lets investors launch charts and graphs to probe the financial data of a select group of companies that have signed on to the agency’s interactive data push, according to a Reuters story.

The story stated, “The SEC’s new Financial Explorer site, reached via http://www.sec.gov/xbrl , is a tool that lets users manipulate raw data derived from XBRL, or extensible business reporting language.

“The agency is pushing companies to start filing their financial data in XBRL, which means that electronic tags much like bar codes would be attached to each piece of financial data.

“More than 70 companies have signed on to the SEC’s XBRL pilot program, and the agency is expected to propose as soon as April that companies be required to file financial results in XBRL.”

Read more here. Among the companies that have signed on to the pilot program are Microsoft and GE.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.