Nice discussion for finding analyst reports online

Getting access to analyst reports to use in business journalism articles can often be a problem for reporters. The analysts don’t want to put you on their mailing list, or they don’t want to e-mail them to you.

Here are some suggestions on how to correct this reporting issue:

Getting analyst reports can be a hit-and-miss proposition. Sometimes, you develop a relationship with an analyst, and they will send them to you in the mail, or increasingly, by e-mail.

Here are some tips on getting on analyst mailing lists:

1. Call up his office and talk to his secretary or his junior analyst and ask to be put on the e-mail list or the mailing list. Tell them that you will call less and quote the reports more if you can get them.

2. Develop a relationship with someone in the company’s PR or investor relations department who gets these reports on a daily basis. Ask them to share them with you.

3. Look at subscribing to a service such as multex.com that provides analyst reports from all of the big brokerage houses online. Sometimes, these reports can be cheap, like $5 or $25 to read, on a servicelike this. But don’t pay for it yourself. See if your newspaper will foot the bill.

As to point No. 3, I found this nice online discussion tonight on where to find analyst reports. It recommends Thomson, which can be seen here. It also suggests Investext on Dialog, which can be seen here.

In addition, if you have a Bloomberg terminal in your newsroom, you can access many analyst reports off of the machine. It depends on what type of service your paper is paying for.

I’m open to hearing/posting any other tips that reporters and editors might have about accessing analyst reports — fully understanding that the relationship between reporters and sell-side analysts is not what it was 10 years ago and that the inherent conflicts in these reports should now be fully disclosed in any story. Please share.