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BusinessJournalism.org Reynolds Center for Business Journalism. Latest Remapping Debate unemployment analytics. Aug. 13, 2012 — TECHNICALLY ENHANCED AND INCORPORATING THE LATEST DATA When you’ve looked for monthly unemployment data, you have probably noticed that you can pretty readily find those data sliced by race or gender. Sometimes you can find the data arranged by age group or by educational attainment.

Three demogrAphic composites at a time Map & Data Resources Resolution at least 1280 X 1024? Click here But each of those dimensions — race or ethnicity, gender, age, and educational attainment — operate at once to create demographic composites for which the unemployment rate looks very different. Earlier this year, Remapping Debate created a striking new set of interactive tools to allow you to explore how each of these factors work together, and we now update the data every month. In order to account for seasonal variation and to reduce the margin of error, the results reported for each month represent a moving average of that month and the preceding 11 months.

Campaign 2012: Data and Analysis about the 2012 Presidential Election. Business reporting: Semester-long course on how to develop compelling business-related stories. This course teaches students how to understand what’s going on at companies big and small and to report and write stories about these businesses in a compelling way. As business becomes more influential in the lives of everyday citizens, it’s important for media to become more aggressive in acting as a watchdog.

More than any other beat, covering business requires not only an understanding of complex numbers, but also the ability to use data and a compelling narrative to tell the reader something they need to know that will impact their wallet. Photo: New York Stock Exchange. Course objective To teach students the basic methods and tactics of a business journalist, regardless of what format the final story will be produced.

Learning objectives Recommended reading Additional reading At least one of the following books should be read by students during the semester for them to get a feel for the interaction between a business reporter, sources, and documents: Assignments: Class 1: Business beats. Dig deep into latest unemployment data with our uniquely customizable viz. July 16, 2012 — NEWLY UPDATED When you’ve looked for monthly unemployment data, you have probably noticed that you can pretty readily find those data sliced by race or gender.

Sometimes you can find the data arranged by age group or by educational attainment. But each of those dimensions — race or ethnicity, gender, age, and educational attainment — operate at once to create demographic composites for which the unemployment rate looks very different. For example, Hispanic men of any age with a bachelor’s degree now have a 12-month moving unemployment rate of 5.8 percent. For Hispanic men who are 16 to 25 and who are not high school graduates, on the other hand, that rate is now 22.3 percent. Last month, Remapping Debate created a striking new set of interactive tools to allow you to explore how each of these factors work together. In the visualization below, you are able to create a demographic composite by making a selection for each of the dimensions discussed.

If you're happy and you know it ... let the government know. Funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, a panel of experts in psychology and economics, including Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman, began convening in December to try to define reliable measures of “subjective well-being.” If successful, these could become official statistics. The idea of the government tallying personal feelings might seem frivolous — or impossibly difficult. For decades, after all, the world has gotten by with gauging a nation’s quality of life on the basis of its GDP, or gross domestic product, the sum of its economic output. But economists and others have long recognized that GDP, a dollars and cents measure, doesn’t count everything that might be considered important when assessing living conditions. But as the United States ventures into the squishy realm of feelings, statisticians will first have to define happiness and then how to measure it.

Neither is a trivial matter. Whatever the obstacles, the effort has momentum. George Soros Shares View on Europe. HEARD ON THE STREET: Groupon Therapy Needed for Profit Measure. By ROLFE WINKLER Trying to steer investors away from marketing expenses wasn't the best way for Groupon to market its own shares. In emphasizing a strange "profit-before-bad-stuff" measure that excludes online marketing expenses, which are the lion's share of the company's marketing budget, Groupon's filing for its initial public offering only drew a bull's-eye on them. That measure, called "adjusted consolidated segment operating income," is now drawing scrutiny from the Securities and Exchange Commission.

There is a growing back-and-forth between the SEC and Groupon's over their accounting for marketing costs. Heard on the Street's Rolfe Winkler explains how this issue may affect the company's IPO. (Photo: Getty Images.) For investors contemplating Groupon's shares, the question is whether the online marketing splurge, $180 million in the latest quarter, will pay off. And yet that is what the company assumes with the "acsoi" measure. Write to Rolfe Winkler at rolfe.winkler@wsj.com. Viacom profits rise 37%; end to DreamWorks Animation deal seen. Viacom delivered 37% higher profit in its third quarter, largely driven by a bounty of revenue at its profitable cable channels including MTV, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon. For the quarter ended June 30, revenue was up 15% to $3.8 billion. The New York media company, controlled by billionaire Sumner Redstone, generated $574 million in net income, or 97 cents per share, compared to $420 million, or 69 cents a share, in the year-earlier period.

Viacom Chief Executive Philippe Dauman said the company's stepped-up investment in original programming was making a difference. He also indicated that Los Angeles-based Paramount Pictures was working under the assumption that it would lose its profitable distribution arrangement with DreamWorks Animation -- a topic that piqued the interest of analysts. Paramount announced last month that it would be forming its own animation studio with the goal of releasing one computer-generated movie a year, beginning in 2014. -- Meg James.

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