Business Reporters Tackle Enron Coverage.

Business Editors

COLUMBIA, Mo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 19, 2002

Business reporters will sift through the ashes of Enron Corp. for clues toward better journalism at their annual conference April 27-30 in Phoenix, Arizona.

The collapse of energy-giant Enron put a spotlight on many professions, including business reporting. Investors and others have asked, did the financial press miss the story until it was too late? Others want to know how the financial press will catch the next Enron in time to save workers and investors.

In a special session, the Society of American Business Editors and Writers Inc. (SABEW) will probe the Enron disaster and the performance of the financial press in covering the story.

"The Enron debacle provides a fascinating study of how the press responds to a scandal and to a rapidly changing story involving both a major company and one of the largest accounting firms in the world," said Floyd Norris, senior financial correspondent for the New York Times, who will lead the discussion.

"We've put together a panel of reporters and editors who were involved in covering this from the time before anyone knew there was a problem through the company's collapse and beyond," Norris said.

Joining Norris will be John Emshwiller of The Wall Street Journal, one of the first reporters to uncover Enron's problems; Joe Nocera, executive editor of Fortune magazine, which broke a major Enron story last March; Scott Clark, assistant managing editor of business/technology at the Houston Chronicle, Enron's hometown newspaper; and Allan Sloan, Wall Street editor for Newsweek magazine.

The 39th Annual SABEW Conference will be held at the Pointe Hilton Tapatio Cliffs Resort in Phoenix. Other speakers include U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick and former Southwest Airlines chief executive officer Heb Kelleher. This year's conference also features a discussion about the state of business journalism and sessions on uncovering accounting shenanigans and statistical distortions.

SABEW is a 501(c)(3) education organization representing 3,200 business journalists and based at the Missouri School of Journalism at the University of Missouri-Columbia. To find out more about the annual conference and other events sponsored by the organization, visit its Web site at www.sabew.org.