So your editor wants you to do some video reporting. Uh-oh.

If your main duty is writing, the impulse to say “no” can be pretty strong when asked to report for a video or make a live television appearance to talk about your story. But don’t dismiss such opportunities lightly.

With the emergence of web video, even traditionally print enterprises are adding live streaming shows and other video elements. Limiting yourself to one medium can make it difficult to hunt for a new job, or even keep and thrive in the one you have now.  Take it from me. My journalism degree was in print, but now I spend part of every workday in front of a camera.

The good news for video-phobes is that you’re not going it alone. If the bosses want you to wade into video, odds are good that you’ll have some help, like training sessions or a producer or video editor to handle the production.

Here are some tips to get more comfortable with video.

Video Reporting

There are plenty of times when having a little video know-how translates into better stories. You can capture quick sound bites from experts, shoot product demos at a trade show, and generate short clips from events you witness on your own.

Equip your smartphone. You can shoot decent video with an iPhone or other smartphone. Buy a tripod and phone mount (roughly $25 total) to ensure your shot is steady and your phone secure, and you’ll have the freedom to be in front of the camera as well as behind it. Get an attachable microphone that can be clipped to your lapel or a source’s (another $25 or so) to improve the sound. Download and get familiar with apps like Tout or Dropbox. The former can help you publish short videos; the latter makes it easier to send footage back to the newsroom.

Practice shooting. Video players are wider than they are tall, which means your footage should be, too. Hold your phone horizontally, with the home button on the right. Keep clips short — say, 10-20 seconds if you’re collecting background images (like an item at a tech show) or one question per clip if you’re interviewing a source. Smaller files transmit faster, and you’ll need that speed when you’re in the field, relying on the variable strength of a wireless signal. Don’t zoom or pan. Just stick with a steady shot; it’s easier to get good footage. And always shoot more clips than you think you need.

Write a video-ready script. It’s different than writing for print or the web. Keep sentences short and simple.  You only have one chance to get your point across because no one is going to re-watch your video if they’re unsure what you meant. There are logistical reasons, too. Long, complex sentences can make you run out of breath. They’re also tougher to remember when you’re on camera. Read what you’ve written out loud to make sure it sounds natural. Time it. In most cases, the script shouldn’t run more than a minute.

Get excited. It’s easy to come across as flat and unenthused on video. You should sound like you’re having a conversation with the viewer, not like you’re reading from a script. You don’t need Jim Cramer-like energy, but you should kick it up a notch. Use your hands as you talk if that feels natural, emphasize your words, and smile when appropriate.

Guest Appearances

Anyone who has ever watched The Daily Show lampoon a television reporter knows how intimidating it can be to appear on live TV or video to talk about something you wrote. But if you do the right prep, it doesn’t have to be so scary.

Take advantage of the pre-segment interview. Producers and anchors generally aren’t out to surprise you with gotcha questions you can’t answer. They’re asking you on to showcase you as an expert. They want you to look good. So pay attention to the questions a producer asks when you’re making arrangements to appear on a show.  You’ll get a lot of detail about the direction the interview, and maybe even a detailed rundown of the questions. The producer might ask you to send over a few talking points. In that case, you can essentially tell them what you want to be asked.

Prep your points. Whether you have a list of possible questions or not, come up with a list of three to five points about your story that you would like to make. As with video reporting, keep your responses short and simple. You don’t want to get bogged down in details that might be hard for viewers to keep up with — or for you to remember!

Dress the part. Dress professionally, head to toe. The day you show up in jeans or wearing beat-up shoes is inevitably the day the interview will take place with you sitting on a couch where your whole ensemble is visible. Ask in advance if makeup and hair service will be provided. If they are, take advantage. The bright lights can make you look washed out and very shiny. (Guys, a little powder won’t kill you.) But always show up looking TV-ready. Schedules don’t always run smoothly, and you may not have much time in the chair.

Accept Murphy’s Law. Sometimes, things go wrong. But it’s not the end of the world. In my very first live television appearance, my earpiece popped out partway through. I grabbed it — admittedly, not gracefully — popped it back in my ear and kept going. If an anchor asks you something you don’t know, it’s perfectly acceptable to say something along the lines of, “I don’t know/I’m not sure/I’m not prepared to talk about that today/That wasn’t the focus of my article, but I can tell you…” and then add in one of your prepared points that fits. Keep your cool, and you’ll still come across like a video pro.

Kelli B. Grant has accepted a job as a writer on the enterprise team at CNBC.com. She is currently the senior consumer reporter at MarketWatch.com and a contributor to The Wall Street Journal. She has written about personal finance for publications including Real Simple, Good Housekeeping and Family Circle.

Today, India boasts the world’s second-fastest growing economy, trailing only China. Its growth spurt has sparked interest and attention from Western media, particularly financial publications.

Covering business in India can be daunting but rewarding. For all of the economic expansion, there is a great deal of corruption. For all of the business opportunities, there are new bureaucratic and regulatory hurdles.

Vikas Bajaj , who covered India for The New York Times, and Amol Sharma, who covered the nation for The Wall Street Journal, spoke about their experiences last month at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. They discussed some of the challenges India can present to a new journalist and offered some tips for getting by.

Read the Local Papers

India’s own media is a good starting point for story ideas and themes. “India is overwhelming because there are too many news stories,” says Sharma. He recommends reading local publications to get a handle on the most important ones. “We looked to them for guidance,” Sharma says.

Don’t Believe Everything You Read

The West has stringent standards when it comes to sourcing. That’s not the case in India, where even rumors may be reported. So read the headlines with some healthy skepticism. And don’t try to compete with Indian business publications for a scoop.

Ignore “No Comment”

In South Asia, getting information from the government is tough. “Ministers will lie to you,” says Bajaj. “People will give you wrong information and cancel on you fifteen times.” Mid-level bureaucrats can be particularly hard to get on the record, he says, “because if their quotes reflect poorly on the country, the downside is huge.” Don’t let this discourage you. Keep hounding the people you need.

Ask for Help With Language

Covering economic stories may land you in rural areas where the language or dialect changes every few kilometers. Sharma and Bajaj said they have a good grasp of Standard Hindi, the national language, but that they still found translators useful.

Aim for a Broader Readership

American freelancers working in India should get used to the idea that they don’t have to file every story for an American audience, says Sharma. Some issues that may be less important to the West may play quite well in South Asia. Be ready to write about a variety of topics, including poverty and development issues, but also sexual violence and local civil movements to curb corruption.

The credit card industry has faced huge challenges since the financial crisis. It has been targeted by federal reform legislation, incurred significant fines from the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, settled a multi-billion antitrust case brought by merchants, and faced down more class actions than anyone can count.

At each turn, the card industry had an answer or a new strategy to survive. Today, it remains a profitable intermediary of American commerce – and a rich beat for any reporter willing to follow it.

Card issuers make money in three basic ways. The most obvious is by charging their customers interest on their debt. They also collect interchange fees from merchants who accept cards. There’s also consumer fee income from late charges, identify theft protection products and payment protection plans.

All three elements of the business can make for great stories. And because most people carry cards around in their wallet, a good article on the industry can generate a lot of attention. Here are some tips on how to cover cards.

Keep an eye on interchange

Banks can afford to offer affluent consumers cash back and other rewards because they charge merchants to process their credit card transactions. Those fees are high relative to those in many other countries, according to Federal Reserve research. Merchants have long feuded with banks over these costs, and the battle has grown more heated since the 2010 cap on debit card transaction fees. In a 2012 antitrust settlement, banks agreed to allow merchants to charge different prices for cash and credit transactions. So far, merchants have been afraid to add surcharges.

Follow marketing tactics

If you want to observe banks’ credit card strategies, the best place to look is their marketing. Banks report their spending on credit card advertising in quarterly filings with their Securities and Exchange Commission, allowing you to see how much they spent trying to poach their rivals’ customers. Separately, advertising research outfits like Mintel release estimates of credit card mail solicitations, which can help you gauge the competition in the industry. In 2012, for instance, the volume of Chase solicitations surged massively. Looking at the types of credit card offers being made can also tell you a lot about the industry. Has a lender started offering zero-interest balance transfers for 12 months? If so, they’re looking to pull in a lot of new customers in a hurry.

Monitor credit quality

Credit cards loans are unsecured debt, making them more risky than mortgages or car loans. That means the industry is subject to a very pronounced boom and bust cycle. Lenders willing to lower their credit standards make a killing in good years and then get killed in downturns. You can identify how much risk an issuer has taken on by searching through its SEC filings for data on borrower credit scores, delinquencies and write offs. You can also check to see whether borrowers are paying down their debt or struggling to stay afloat.

Understand add-on products

Some issuers have made a substantial side business out of services like payment protection (the ability to defer or cancel debt in case of emergencies like job loss or hospitalization) and identity theft protection. Consumer advocates pan these products because they cost a lot compared to how much value they provide to consumers. Federal regulators have begun to take notice. Recently, Capitol One reached a $210 million settlement with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau over such services. If the industry starts to tweak these add-on products to dodge regulatory attention, that could make for an interesting line of stories.

Track complaints

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ruffled feathers in the industry when it made its database of consumer complaints public, but it lost no friends in journalism. Want to know what products are leaving consumers feeling like they didn’t get a fair deal? You can find the answer and create visualizations of the data. However, keep in mind that these complaints are unsubstantiated allegations.

Don’t forget defaulted debts

Even in good times, credit card companies will have charge offs, which they report in quarterly SEC filings. All of the major banks have significant collection operations and pursue debtors in local court. Most of them also sell bad loans to private buyers who then try to collect the money on their own behalf. There’s not a tremendous amount of comprehensive data on this portion of the industry, but a recent Federal Trade Commission report offers a good start.

Jeff Horwitz covers the financial services industry at The American Banker.

For business reporters interested in emerging markets, there may be no more compelling assignment than China. The nation’s meteoric GDP growth has helped create a burgeoning middle class. Accusations of currency manipulation often put the government at odds with the United States. Poor labor conditions have prompted international protests. China is interesting. Journalists want in.

Any new beat comes with its own quirks and demands, and there is always a learning curve, but covering China presents some unique challenges. The government can be opaque. The language barrier can be steep.

Bloomberg News reporters Michael Forsythe, who has spent a total of eight years reporting on-and-off from Beijing, and Henry Sanderson, who has spent the last three years there, have covered a wide variety of business stories in China. In January, Bloomberg Press published their book on China Development Bank, the financial juggernaut that has helped fund the nation’s acquisition of huge amounts of debt overseas. The two spoke about their experiences at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism earlier this month.

Here are a few tips they had to offer journalists weighing a move to China.

Brace for a cold shoulder

One of the main differences between reporting in China and a country like the United States is access to information, particularly from companies.

When Mr. Sanderson was reporting on CDB, the bank had no clue how to handle the foreign press, he said. There was no public relations department. And email? “They will ask you to fax questions to which you receive no response.”

Mr. Forsythe said Chinese companies are “not as open with information” as those in the U.S. and that suspicions about foreign reporters remain high. Interviews are often hard to get, and the Chinese generally don’t respond to phone calls. His advice: Ambush them. “You just have to go and show up,” he said. “It’s a total gamble.”

Leverage online databases

There is a surprising amount of financial and economic data available to reporters who know where to look.

“You can get a lot of information about the economy, even about people, by looking at all these documents online,” Mr. Forsythe said, referring to a collection of bond prospectus data he used in a PowerPoint presentation. It’s all about collating data on your own and seeing where it leads you.

Master the language early

Fluency in Chinese is necessary to be a good business reporter in Beijing. Nearly all reading material is in Chinese, and the vast majority of interviews are conducted in Mandarin.

Mr. Sanderson says he got a lot of information from books, which were all in Chinese.

Mr. Forsythe spent four years studying Mandarin in the U.S. before his first sting in Beijing, but he says he wished he had spent more time studying the language before heading over. Only after an additional two-month intensive program in China did he consider himself fluent. “You just have to invest the time,” he says.

Exchange-traded funds, or ETFs, are one of the fastest growing investment vehicles in the world today, and most financial publications cover them in one way or another.

ETF stories primarily fall into two categories: articles that address issues affecting participants in the ETF industry and personal finance stories for investors and advisors. Industry-focused stories are typically features dealing with new entrants into the industry, issues with trading, bid-ask spreads and liquidity, as well as breaking news. Personal finance stories examine the structure, holdings and costs of the funds and whether they make good investments.

The ETF industry started on January 29, 1993, with the creation of a single fund, the SPDR S&P 500 (ticker symbol: SPY), a joint effort of the American Stock Exchange and State Street Global Advisors. By the end of 2012, there were 1,194 U.S.-listed ETFs with assets under management of more than $1.34 trillion. The ETF industry has spread to many other countries, but ETFs outside the U.S. can have many differences from U.S. ETFs. This story will focus solely on ETFs listed in the U.S.

What is an ETF?

Exchange-traded funds are investment companies that trade like stocks but whose value reflects a basket of securities. Like mutual funds, they provide investors holding limited capital a way to own a diversified portfolio. ETFs are among the securities regulated by the U.S. Investment Company Act of 1940, better known as the 1940 Act..

Mutual funds and most ETFs are open-ended funds, which means that they can create as many shares as needed to fill investor demand. Mutual fund investors must place a buy or sell order during market hours, but the funds trade once a day, after the market closes, at just one price. ETFs trade on a stock exchange during market hours and fluctuate in price. ETFs can hold stocks and/or bonds and can be structured as either open-ended funds or unit investment trusts.

How are ETFs traded?

A major difference between ETFs and mutual funds is the way they are sold. Mutual funds sell shares directly to investors. ETF shares go through what is known as the “creation and redemption process,”  in which actual securities are taken off the market and traded for an equal number of shares in the ETF. The securities are deposited and become assets of the fund, while the ETF shares are sold on the exchange to investors.

The creation/redemption process is what allows ETF shares to trade on an exchange while closely tracking the value of the underlying assets held by the fund. It’s also responsible for many of the benefits the ETF holds over the mutual fund, such as its flexibility, tax efficiency and transparency.

Not all “ETFs” are ETFs

Strictly speaking, not all “ETFs” are exchange-traded funds. In addition to stocks and bonds, the creation/redemption process provides a way for alternative asset classes, such as commodities and currencies, to exist in an exchange-traded product (ETP) similar to exchange-traded funds.

Because most of the investing public remains unfamiliar with ETFs, the ETF industry refers to most of these exchange-traded products as ETFs as a way to avoid confusion. However, exchange-traded commodities and other ETPs, such as exchange-traded notes (ETNs), are not regulated by the 1940 Act. They have different product structures, hold different assets such as physical commodities, futures contracts or senior subordinated debt, and are regulated by other U.S. securities laws, giving them different tax structures. Most are not eligible for the low tax rate given to long-term capital gains.

Personal Finance Stories

Your job as the writer of a personal finance story is to give your reader all the information necessary to make an informed investment decision. Most ETFs are index funds, which means they try to replicate the return of a specific market index. You need to explain how the index is formulated and whether the ETF holds every security in the index or tries to approximate the index by holding only some of its components. You need to list the fund’s major holdings, and, if it’s an international fund, which countries it tracks. If the ETF isn’t new, give its 1-year, 3-year and 5-year performance record. Don’t forget to include the expense ratio, the fee the fund company charges for managing the ETF.

If you are writing about an ETP, in addition to the holdings, describe the product structure and tax structure. Finally, specify the risks that come with owning this kind of product. Remember, you are not selling the product. You are performing a service. Your job is to explain the product’s good and bad points.

Finding Story Ideas and Data

Every major financial news organization reports on ETFs. However, IndexUniverse.com is probably the premier news source for the industry because it writes solely about exchange-traded products and indexes. ETFGuide.com is another good source.

Your first source for industry statistics and research is the Investment Company Institute, or ICI, the trade group for the mutual fund and ETF industries. The ICI has a list of all the ETF companies operating in the U.S. Introduce yourself to their media contacts and ask to receive their press release emails.

Every ETF company runs a website filled with extensive data about each of their funds. This should be the first place you look for information on a specific fund. Morningstar.com is an excellent source for up-to-date ETF performance data. Morningstar also publishes articles and analysis on specific funds and industry trends.

Finding Sources

The ETF industry hosts conferences throughout the year. These are good places to meet industry leaders from the top fund companies, ETF analysts and investment advisors who use ETFs in client portfolios. In addition, as with most beats, call the sources other reporters use in their stories.

Lawrence Carrel is the author of “ETFs for the Long Run: What They Are, How They Work, and Simple Strategies for Successful Long-Term Investing” and “Dividend Stocks for Dummies.” He created the “ETF Focus” column for SmartMoney.com, wrote the weekly ETF column at TheStreet.com, and was one of the original writers of the Cyber Investing column at WSJ.com.

The stock market is on a tear. Retail investors who shied away during the recession are now returning to stocks in droves. One of the most obvious beneficiaries: online brokerage firms. If the rally continues, stocks such as TD Ameritrade, Charles Schwab, Scottrade and E*Trade, which primarily make money by taking a cut from each trade placed on their platforms, should pick up steam.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average recently hit its highest point since October 2007, and many market watchers project more gains this year. Investors have been pouring money into stock funds recently. In January, equity funds posted their largest inflows for any four-week period since 1996, according to Lipper.

Shares of brokerage firms have benefitted. The iShares Dow Jones US Broker-Dealers Index began outperforming the S&P 500 in December.

If market activity continues to rise, higher trading volumes should drive more growth among online brokerage firms. Here are three U.S. retail brokers whose shares should post near-term gains.

Charles Schwab (SCHW)

Shares of the brokerage Charles Schwab have been outperforming the S&P 500 since December. The stock hit a record high just after the Dow’s recent milestone.

With a market cap of $22.3 billion, Charles Schwab has solid fundamentals. The company increased its fourth-quarter earnings per share by about 15 percent over the year-ago period. Revenue was up 8 percent over the same period. Schwab’s operating cash flow jumped by nearly 100 percent in a year, significantly above the industry average, a net loss of about 90 percent.

The caveat for Schwab is that growth expectations may have already been factored into its stock price. The company has a trailing 12-month price-to-earnings ratio of 25.21, above the S&P 500’s price to earnings ratio of 17.87.

TD Ameritrade (AMTD)

A cheaper option for a brokerage stock is TD Ameritrade. The company has a price-to-earnings ratio of 19.62, slightly above the average for the S&P 500, but below its industry median.

Ameritrade has recently done better than expected on a quarterly basis. The brokerage earned 27 cents a share in the first quarter, exceeding analyst estimates of 24 cents.

Ameritrade reported a net gain last year but failed to post any revenue growth. However, that could soon change, considering retail investors’ renewed interest in the stock market,

E*Trade Financial (ETFC)

A riskier bet for short-term investors is the online retail brokerage E*Trade. The stock has underperformed its competitors and has a beta of 2.3, suggesting a lot of volatility.

The company also made a major management change in January, naming Paul Idzick, the former chief operating officer of Barclays, as its new chief executive. Since then, E*Trade has undergone significant cost-cutting and debt management measures to restore a bottom line depressed by the recession.

E*Trade’s stock price surged 32 percent this year – more than three times the gain of the S&P 500 – but shares recently plummeted after its largest stakeholder Citadel LLC, a Chicago-based hedge fund, announced it would sell its 9.6 percent stake. Citadel made investments totaling more than $4 billion in 2007 and 2009 to help E*Trade survive the bad bets it made on mortgages during the housing crisis.

Citadel’s recent sale might signal the hedge fund has given up on E*Trade. On the other hand, it could mean the online brokerage firm has become self-sufficient. If that’s the case, now may be a good time to buy the stock on the cheap. The company’s second-quarter earnings release, scheduled for April 15, will be crucial in determining its prospects.

For years, financial advisers have had to persuade investors saving for retirement not to take on too much risk. Although equities offer a larger payout on average over time, they are also more volatile, the conventional wisdom said, so a balanced portfolio of stocks and bonds was the best approach.

Recently, investors have taken that advice and ran with it. Today, fixed income investments like bonds make up the largest share of 401(k) plan assets in recent history, according to the Employment Benefit Research Institute, a Washington-based research group that has been tracking retirement fund allocation since 1996.

The problem is that even as savers were looking to curb risk, they may have unknowingly introduced more. This large-scale shift in asset allocation could actually weigh on 401(k) balances in two ways, investment professionals say. First, a portfolio without enough exposure to equities could leave investors short of their savings goals when they stop working. Second, too much money in bonds could leave retirees more vulnerable to an inevitable rise in interest rates.

Now, if investors continue to increase their exposure to bonds as they have been, a generation of risk-averse savers may have to either delay their retirement or face the prospect of a leaner life after work.

The Flight to Safety

Today’s average 401(k) plan looks markedly different than it did just 15 years ago. In 1998, the typical plan participant had about 28% of his or her portfolio in fixed income investments. In 2011, the last year for which data are available, it was up to 34%. Over the same period, the share of assets in bond funds, per se, more than doubled.

Those gains came at the expense of exposure to equities. The average 401(k) plan participant reduced investments in equity funds from 50% in 1998 to 39% in 2011.

“People were more concerned about preserving capital than the potential for growth in the equity markets,” says Judy Hastleton, a financial advisor who oversees more than $37 million.

EBRI President Dallas Salisbury says retail investors may have left equities because they could not tolerate the recent volatility. “Individuals cannot deal with the risk that (in theory) institutions sponsoring pension plans can,” he said in an email .

Bonds, on the other hand, have performed well over the last ten years. A dollar invested in long-term government bonds at the end of 2002 would have been worth $2.06 at the end of last year. A dollar invested in large company stocks over the same period would have grown to $1.99. (For small company stocks, it was closer to $2.69 in small company stocks.)

A Bubble on the Horizon

Although 2012 was a great year for bonds, fixed income analysts warn that 2013 may be less kind. Interest rates remain at historic lows and bond prices will fall if interest rates rise “It may be time to get selective in the bond market,” Jamie Stuttard, head of the international bond portfolio at Fidelity, wrote in the company’s 2013 global bond outlook.

Financial planners like Hastleton are advising clients intent on maintaining their fixed income exposure to stay at the short end of the yield-curve and diversify their holdings with corporate and high-yield bonds.

“Fixed income is not safe,” says Goran Hagegard, Managing Director of investment management at Stamford Conn. based Greenwich Associates. He says bond portfolios will drop in value if interest rates go up or if inflation rises faster than expected.

Some investors are already losing money because their bond holdings don’t keep them at pace with inflation, Hastleton says. The 10-year U.S. treasury yield traded between 1.3 and 2.9 percent throughout 2012, while inflation averaged about 2.0 percent. “I have seen my clients extending their work life past what they anticipated and cutting back expenses to save as much as they can for retirement,” Hastleton says.

The Risk-Averse Generation

Young Americans have become dramatically conservative in saving for retirement over the last 15 years. In 1998, 401(k) participants in their 20s put about 5 percent of their assets in bonds and 62 percent in equities. In 2011, the new group of participants in their 20s put about 7 percent of their assets in bonds and 33 percent in equities

Hagegard says this strategy is all wrong. “Why would you put any money in fixed income if you plan to retire in 40 years?” he says. “The best you can do is put money in equities and not look at it. Volatility is immaterial to you if your investment horizon is that long.”

For young savers, the consequences could be severe. “I think they are not going to be able to save as much as they are going to need in retirement” says Hastleton. Given the uncertainty around social security and other benefits, she says, “people in their 20s today need to be much more self sufficient than people in their 50s and 60s today, and high fixed income exposure won’t facilitate that.”

Stocks might in the long run. Prudential, the nation’s second largest life insurance company, said in its annual report that the long-term expected rate of return for equities would be over 9 percent, while the long-term expected rate of return for fixed income is a little over 5 percent.

Financial planners say 401(k) participants in their 20s should have at least 70 to 80 percent of their portfolio in equities. “If you have a good career path [and] are saving consistently for your retirement, you need to take on more risk,” says  Hastleton.

Building sources on any beat can take a long time, but when news breaks, you need them immediately. For new reporters – or reporters new to a beat – finding trusted sources quickly can be challenging. However, social networks and other online resources are putting journalists in touch with the people they need faster than ever before.

Social media has made it easier for new reporters and freelancers to connect with new sources almost immediately. News websites, discussion boards and question-and-answer forums have made it possible to find sources with material information and fresh opinions about a variety of issues.

Below are five resources with some hacks and tips to help journalists crowdsource their reporting.

Quora

Quora is a question-and-answer website that allows users to ask and answer questions in an open forum, as well as send private messages to individual users. Journalists can search for questions by topic and then send private messages requesting interviews with users whose prior answers suggest they know what they’re talking about.

Reporters covering innovation will find the site especially useful. Quora’s users include a lot of Internet entrepreneurs and technology enthusiasts. Business executives like Yelp Chief Executive Jeremy Stoppelman and Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales are active on the site. Many of the users are there because they enjoy answering questions.

Complaints Board

Complaints Board is a web forum where consumers air their grievances against individuals or businesses. These reports are largely uninvestigated and unconfirmed, but journalists can use the site as a jumping off point to locate and question potential victims of business scams about their experiences.

Unlike some other consumer advocacy forums, Complaints Board requires consumers to register with user profiles using their name (sometimes an alias) and location. Journalists can register their own profile and message users directly. Like Quora, one of the benefits of Complaints Board is its self-selecting user base of people who want to share their experiences.

Reddit

Reddit is a content-sharing website that organizes user submissions into categories. The site has a search bar that allows journalists to look for content based on keywords and then connect with the users who made submissions. An investor in Apple, for example, may describe the logic behind his investment. Reddit users sometimes use fake names in their profiles, but the site has a direct messaging option like Quora.

Reddit has a helpful topic category called “IAmA,” in which people describe themselves (“I am a banker”) and offer up their expertise with the phrase “AMA” (“ask me anything”). Journalists can message users privately or participate in public conversations with other Reddit users. Prominent figures such as President Barack Obama and Bill Gates have appeared on Reddit AMAs.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a social networking site for professionals, which allows registered users to display their job profiles, as well as connect with and message other users. The site offers an advanced search function that can find the names of current or past employees of particular companies. Employees no longer with a company are often in a better position to disclose sensitive information.

To search LinkedIn’s database by former employers, users have to buy a premium subscription to the service. The website offers journalists a one-year premium subscription for free. They must join the LinkedIn for Journalists group and watch for postings in the discussion about the next conference call to learn about the site’s features. Participation in this conference call is a prerequisite to receiving the offer.

Comments sections on major news sites

Many journalists who publish on the websites of major news organizations don’t make time to read the comments section on even their own stories, but combing through the reader comments can steer those journalists toward sources for follow-up stories. Readers often vent about their own experiences in the comments section, sometimes revealing that they have a unique perspective on a particular topic or close ties to a certain person.

Sometimes, it can be difficult to identify the commenter. Most news sites require users to login with their email and provide a name to leave comments, and only journalists who work at the site have access to a commenter’s email address. In addition, commenters sometimes use aliases instead of their real names to log in. Journalists can work around with these hurdles by logging into a news website and leaving a reply to a comment, in which they identify themselves and ask to continue the conversation elsewhere.

For journalists, the stock market is an important source of information. Its broad movements can reveal a great deal about what investors are feeling at any given moment and how they think current events might impact the economy. The same can be said for individual stock prices. When they go up or down, that’s a signal that investors’ confidence in their companies has changed.

There is another source of information about investor confidence, one that reporters use less often but that can offer them a far more detailed picture: options. These contracts allow investors to place bets on stocks hitting specific peaks, valleys or ranges by a given date. Options trading activity offers a window into where sophisticated investors believe a stock or basket of stocks is headed – and when it’s going to get there.

Reporters who know how to interpret options activity have an immediate leg up. They get access to early clues about shifts in broad market sentiment, as well as the suspicions of savvy investors about surprises and flaws underlying individual companies.

The options industry itself is also a wellspring of stories. The emergence of ever more complex investment vehicles has prompted new calls for tighter regulation of the derivatives markets, where options are traded. If you’re going to cover stocks, you should know a little about how options work and how to use the data they provide in your stories.

What is an option?

Options are a type of derivative, a financial instrument that derives its value from another asset like a stock or group of stocks. In this case, they guarantee the holder the right to buy or sell some amount of a stock at a certain price.

There are two basic types of options. A call option gives the holder the right to buy a share of the underlying asset at a preset price known as the strike price. A put option gives the holder the right to sell that asset at the strike price.

Because options offer the holder some flexibility, they are often used to hedge larger positions in the same stock. For example, say an investor owns 10 shares of Acme Widgets that he bought at $50 each but believes the stock is poised for a steep fall. By purchasing a put option to sell the stock at a strike price of $45, he can lock in that sale price even if the stock falls to $40, $30 or $10. In effect, he’s bought himself some protection to manage his risk.

Many investors use options not only to hedge their positions, but also to turn a profit. An option is said to be “in the money” if the movement of the underlying asset has made it profitable. For example, say Acme Widgets is now trading at $100. A trader purchases a call option that allows him to buy the stock at $105, no matter how high it goes. If Acme jumps to $110, the option becomes “in the money.” The trader can now profit on the deal.

Of course, options contracts also cost money themselves. Their prices vary with the duration of the option and the value of the underlying asset.

How are options traded?

The idea of options is almost as old as the financial markets themselves, but the first standardized options trade for the general public opened on April 26, 1973, when the Chicago Board of Options Exchange opened for business. That day, 911 contracts were traded on the exchange. In April 2012, more than 4.3 million contracts were traded per day on average.

Today, options contracts are listed on a number of exchanges, including the CBOE, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, NYSE Euronext, Deutsche Börse and InterContinental Exchange. (Options can also be traded over the counter, but the market is unregulated and driven by custom contracts between two parties.)

Who regulates standardized options trading?

The Options Clearing Corporation, the only clearing organization for options trading, is regulated by the Securities Exchange Commission for its activities in securities and by the Commodities Futures Trading Commission for futures.

What are the key data points in options trading?

As with the stock market, trading volume is a helpful way to put options activity into context for readers. The busier the day, the higher the volume.

The ratio of puts (selling contracts) traded to calls (buying contract) traded is a good gauge of sentiment about a particular stock or group of stocks. A put-call ratio greater than one suggests traders are bearish on an option’s underlying asset. Individual stocks have their own put-call ratios, but so does the broader market.

A stock’s implied volatility is an estimate for how much options traders expect it to move in a single day. A sharp rise suggests traders predict the stock will move a lot in either direction.

A stock’s options premium is the difference between the cost of a call (buying contract) and a put (selling contract). A high premium suggests the options market is betting a sharp rise in the underlying asset.

Open interest is a measure of the most active options for a particular stock. It indicates where the market is placing the most bets. Open interest refers to the number of options sold by a market maker to a customer, or by a customer to a market maker, that are still active. If the seller reverses the transaction (an option owner sells the contract, or the option seller buys the contract back), then that interest is closed.

Where can I find trusted data on the options market?

The websites of the main options exchanges publish data about trading volumes and active options. They also put out daily, monthly and annual market reports.

Separately, the OCC publishes market statistics and industry research on its website.

Several media organizations report regularly on the options market. Bloomberg TV, among others, airs an options update every day, in which traders discuss why they’re buying certain options at particular strike prices. CNBC.com publishes daily videos identifying trades in the options market.

What are the caveats?

Because traders use options to bet on upward movement in a stock and minimize their downside risk, it’s difficult to read too much into the data. For example, rising put action coupled with a rising stock does not necessarily mean a bet that the price will fall. It could be merely a natural part of traders’ strategies to buy a put for a stock they already own to hedge that position.

Options data offers strong directional hints about a stock and can be a good starting point for further reporting, but it should always be backed up with fundamental research, including analyst commentary and interviews with institutional investors.

For more than 40 years, the Freedom of Information Act has helped business journalists unearth government documents and break news. But today, few reporters take full advantage of it. Some are discouraged by what they assume is a complicated submission process. Others are unaware the act even exists, let alone that it can serve their reporting.

The truth is that a FOIA request is remarkably simple, and more people are making them than ever before. In fiscal 2012, federal agencies received more than 651,000 FOIA requests, a nine percent increase from fiscal 2008, according to government data. Although waiting times can be lengthy and some requests may yield little of much use, Washington accommodates the majority of FOIA requests. Agencies provided full or partial information for more than ninety percent of the requests it processed last year.

With the proper preparation, ample persistence, and plenty of patience, reporters can obtain government documents that will bolster their ability to provide public interest information.

For example, FOIA requests led to Bloomberg News’s 2011 coverage that revealed the true extent of the Federal Reserve’s loans to banks and other firms during the financial crisis. And The Wall Street Journal that year used the Freedom of Information Act to gain insight into how corporate titans use their private aircraft.

What is FOIA?

The Freedom of Information Act was enacted by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1966. The law states that all people, regardless of American citizenship, have the right to U.S. federal agencies’ records. According to the Supreme Court, the law is designed to “ensure an informed citizenry, vital to the functioning of a democratic society, needed to check against corruption and to hold the governors accountable to the governed.”

To be sure, there have always been some limits to the kind of information that can be obtained. Today, although the number of FOIA requests has risen since the Bush administration, fewer are being granted. At the same time, journalists complain that FOIA requests often take so long for the government to complete, if they’re completed at all, that the law has lost some of its usefulness.

However, requesters shouldn’t be deterred by possible delays. As the old adage goes, “don’t ask, don’t get.” Here’s a guide to getting the most out of FOIA requests:

1. Target the appropriate federal agency.

You must submit your request to a specific governmental agency. One approach is to consider the focus of your story and then assess which government body might have the most relevant information.

A good starting point is FOIA.gov, a Department of Justice website that provides information on individual agencies, their respective offices, and contact details for each agency’s FOIA officials. Journalists who are requesting information from the Department of Justice but are unsure about which division to contact can call the agency’s FOIA requester service center at (301) 583-7354. The DOJ might also be able to provide information about other government agencies to contact.

Keep in mind that some agencies receive more requests than others, and that could affect response times. In fiscal year 2012, the top five agencies receiving FOIA requests were the Department of Homeland Security (190,589 requests); the Department of Justice, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation (69,456 requests); the Department of Health and Human Services (68,467 requests); the Department of Defense (66,078); and the Social Security Administration (31,329 requests). On the other hand, the African Development Foundation received just four FOIA requests last year.

2. Write the FOIA request letter.

FOIA request letters typically contain just a few basic components:

• The name and contact details of the agency’s FOIA official
• The requester’s name and contact information, including mailing address
• A stipulation that you’re a journalist submitting a FOIA request
• Specific details about the information you’re requesting

The Arlington, Virginia-based Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press has an online FOIA letter generator that can be used to create and personalize requests. And many agencies provide sample FOIA request letters on their websites. The FBI, for example, provides a sample letter. You can also simply search Google for the agency’s name followed by “FOIA template,” such as “CIA FOIA template.”

Again, be sure to address the letter to the agency’s appropriate FOIA official, and note that since you are a member of the news media seeking information in the public interest, search fees should be waived. You can also specify that, if charges are incurred for some reason, you would like to be notified if such costs exceed a certain amount, like $25 or $50. Most agencies allow FOIA request letters to be submitted via an online form or email.

3. File requests early, and be prepared to wait.

Although agencies are required by law to respond to FOIA requests within 20 working days, the government says that the sheer number and complexity of submissions often makes meeting this deadline difficult. Response times vary by agency, with some replying within a week or two and other taking much longer, perhaps years.

When agencies cannot respond to requests within 20 working days, such requests are considered “backlogged.” At the end of fiscal year 2012, there were 71,790 backlogged requests throughout all agencies. This represents 11 percent of the requests received during the year. And some agencies have yet to resolve some requests made years ago. The National Archives and Records Administration has had a request pending for more than 13 years. The Department of Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency have had requests pending for over 11 years.

Assume that if your requests are able to be met, they’ll take several months to complete. Consider making your FOIA requests part of your early reporting, rather than waiting until you’re in the midst of the story.

4. Follow up.

Requesters should receive a letter from agencies after filing FOIA requests providing tracking numbers for their queries. Keep these numbers on hand, as they will be useful in following up on the request’s status.

A simple spreadsheet can help organize FOIA-related information (Click here for example). The spreadsheet contains columns for the agency, documents requested, tracking number, FOIA officials, their responses, etc.

One promising online resource worth watching is FOIAMachine.org, a nonprofit site started by a team of journalists and others. The free service, which is funded by the John S. Knight Foundation and the Center for Investigative Reporting, is designed to help people make and track FOIA requests.

5. About those exemptions: Don’t give up.

Sometimes, government agencies say FOIA requests are subject to various exemptions. Indeed, there are nine such exemptions that allow the government to withhold information. These exceptions include requests pertaining to issues of national security, an agency’s personnel matters, businesses’ trade secrets or confidential information, and more.

If an agency declares that requested material is exempt from FOIA requests, appeals are still possible. In some cases, the agency is obliged to provide the information, but with the portions deemed sensitive redacted. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press has a guide to FOIA appeals organized by exemption.

Journalists should remember that they have every right to seek government documents. When it comes to obtaining information from Washington for the public interest, the law is squarely on the side of citizens.

Read the full text of the FOIA here.
Read the Supreme Court’s statement on FOIA’s purpose here.