Covering Businesses Fall 2011
COURSE DESCRIPTION: If the economy is the theater, then companies are the actors on the stage. How they manage and finance themselves, the products and services they sell, and the strategies and behaviors they adopt can leave an indelible impact on our society. Whether it’s BP with its oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the financial debacles at AIG and Bear Stearns, or the gravity-defying growth of Apple, Google and Facebook, companies are frequently cast as the villains or heroes of our society. We are living at a time of unusually fierce ideological warfare, a period in which society’s scrutiny of corporate behavior is particularly intense. All the more important, then, that students have the ability to think analytically about companies, rather than casting them in superficial roles. This course will focus on the fundamentals: students will learn how to interview executives aggressively but fairly, evaluate corporate strategies, analyze earnings reports, and understand the role of capital markets and investors in a company’s success or failure. Students will also learn about the regulatory environment in which companies operate, and become familiar with current corporate governance issues. We will use companies in the news as our fodder for classroom discussion. Students will select one company to cover for the semester that will form the basis for stories, whether on the company’s strategic positioning, its quarterly earnings, its corporate governance or its CEO. Print, multimedia and broadcast pieces will be deconstructed in class to show students the different ways that storytelling about companies can occur. LEARNING OBJECTIVES By the end of the semester, students will: • Be familiar with the basic language of business. • Know how to dissect corporate earnings statements. • Have experience interviewing executives, analysts and investors • Be adept at analyzing corporate strategies. • Be proficient at producing stories about companies in an engaging way
