“Building Winning Business Investigations” session from Reynolds Week 2016

1. Building Winning Business
Investigations
aka Iterating into the Future
Glenn Hall
U.S. Editor

2. Ronald Weaver isn’t a cardiologist.
Ronald Weaver collected $2.3 million from Medicare
in 2012 for a cardiac procedure that is rarely used by
heart doctors.

3. 2015 Pulitzer Prize
Investigative Reporting
Medicare Unmasked
Of the $9 billion Medicare
paid individual doctors and
providers for administering
drugs alone, about 70% went
to the top 1% of billers.
The newly released Medicare
billing data followed a
yearslong legal effort by The
Wall Street Journal following a
1979 court ruling that the
records be kept secret to
protect doctor privacy.

5. In 2004, Congress passed a law
intended to punish CEOs who
moved their companies
oversees to shift their legal
addresses to tax havens.
In 2013, Paul Bisaro moved New
Jersey-based drugmaker Actavis
to low-tax Ireland and avoided
the tax penalties because his
company accelerated vesting of
$40 million in stock.
Actavis also gave him $5 million
to remain with the company
after the move.

6. 2015 Pulitzer Prize
Explanatory Journalism
Corporate Tax
Dodgers
The only operetta ever
written about Subpart F of
the IRS code celebrated the
first corporate inversion in
1990, with this verse:
The Feds may be screaming
But we are all beaming
‘Cause we’ll never pay taxes
We’ll never pay taxes,
Never pay taxes again!

7. Chinese Prime Minister Wen
Jiabao has said leaders should
ensure that family members
and friends “do not abuse
government influence.”
Yet his mother, brother, son,
daughter and even his
brother in law have all
become extraordinarily
wealthy during his leadership.

8. 2013 Loeb Award
International Winner
China’s Secret
Fortunes
The New York Times reviewed
corporate and regulatory
records to show that relatives
of China’s prime minister –
including his wife -- have a
knack for aggressive deal
making and control assets
worth at least $2.7 billion.
The prime minister’s younger
brother, for example, has a
company that was awarded
more than $30 million in
government contracts .

9. A faulty ignition switch, which GM knew about for more than a
decade, prompted the company to recall nearly 30 million cars
and pay compensation for 124 deaths.
GM also paid $900 million to the U.S. government as part of a
Deferred Prosecution Agreement.

10. Failure to Recall
2014 SABEW
Best in Business
Radio/TV
Investigative
Failure to Recall rises to
the level of award-
winning journalism by
informing the public,
promoting change and
improvement, and
holding responsible
parties accountable.

11. Inside Sysco
A hidden camera investigation exposed the illegal food practices of Sysco
Corporation, the world’s largest food distributor.
Sysco paid a landmark $19.4 million settlement.
2015 Loeb Award
Video/Audio Winner
The investigative series
"Inside Sysco: Exposing
North America's Food
Sheds” revealed unsafe
storage by the world’s
largest food service
company and also won a
national News &
Documentary Emmy
Award for outstanding
regional news story.

12. UMKC Ranked No. 1 in the World
Bloch School of Management at University of Missouri-Kansas City
ranked above Harvard, MIT and Stanford for innovation
management research.
The Kansas City Star found a previously
undisclosed relationship between the study’s
Chinese authors and the university.
The newspaper’s research found the study
appeared to have been structured to ensure the
Bloch School received the top ranking.

13. 2015 Loeb Award
Local Winner
Misleading March
To the Top
Michael Song, the University of
Missouri-Kansas City business
school professor at the heart of
a rankings scandal, has
resigned, the school said Friday
afternoon. His resignation was
announced after fellow faculty
members at the Henry W.
Bloch School of Management
earlier that afternoon
renounced all awards and
recognitions received by the
school’s entrepreneurship
program during the decade
Song was its head.

14. Episodic Journalism
ep·i·sod·ic
/epəˈsädik/
adjective
• occurring occasionally and at irregular intervals.
"volcanic activity is highly episodic in nature"
Synonyms: intermittent, sporadic, periodic, fitful, irregular, spasmodic, occasional;
nonconsecutive

15. Episodic Journalism
ep·i·sod·ic
/epəˈsädik/
adjective
• occurring occasionally and at irregular intervals.
"volcanic activity is highly episodic in nature"
Synonyms: intermittent, sporadic, periodic, fitful, irregular, spasmodic, occasional;
nonconsecutive
• containing or consisting of a series of loosely connected parts or events.
"an episodic narrative"
Synonyms: in episodes, in installments, in sections, in parts

17. Serial follows the conventions of sequential storytelling -- conventions
that came out of the Victorian era, when books were issued as
installments. For instance, each chapter of Great Expectations arrived to
the public simply as a link in an ongoing narrative -- its own self-
contained unit with elements of cliffhanger suspense built in.
Only later were the bits collected and put together in book form (and
this was simply to make money twice).
That's how Serial is supposed to get you: The feeling of true waiting --
something that is lost in our digital culture where all things are
instantaneously present simultaneously -- is a novel sensation. Pardon
the pun.

18. 2015 Pulitzer Prize Finalist
Public Service
Deadly Medicine
Pulitzer judges called the series
“a stellar reporting project that
documented the significant
cancer risk to women of a
common surgery and prompted
a change in the prescribed
medical treatment.

19. Dr. Hooman Noorchashm and
his wife Amy Reed, in 2014
launched a campaign against
a surgical procedure known
as morcellation. Amy was
diagnosed with advanced
stage cancer soon after
having a routine laparoscopic
hysterectomy by way of
morcellation. Brigham and
Women's Hospital in Boston,
has said the morcellation
process potentially worsened
Amy's prognosis.

23. Derivative Isn’t Derogative
On how ProPublica wins Pulitzers AND wins followers:
“They’re deconstructing the news, and reconstructing it
into forms designed to help their readers and serve their
mission.”
– Megan Garber, Nieman Labs, 2011
“We’re taking all the little bits of and pieces and making
them useful to people in a much more immediate way.”
-- Amanda Michel, ProPublica director if distributed
reporting at the time.

24. 20 Must-
see PhotosFAQ
5 Things You need to know about xxx
10 Things XXX Won’t Tell You
What
Is
Y?
The 1 Chart that explains Z
Why Q happens
How to avoid X

25. One Chart That Proves the Power of
Iterative Investigations