Yesterday I attended American University’s/ Reynolds Center‘s “Covering the Financial Crisis in the New Administration.” This was a one-day workshop about all aspects of the financial meltdown with an emphasis on how to localize coverage for the communities journalists cover. Oh, and it was entirely free.

Having said that, I was surprised at how few people showed up, especially considering how much journalists enjoy free food and unlimited coffee (both present). We all fit into an average-sized conference room. Judging from the nametags still on their Avery sheets, at least five people registered but did not actually bother to turn up. And curiously, representatives from most of D.C.’s major media players were absent. Instead, I rubbed shoulders with folks from all over: instructors from Howard, writers from Gaithersburg, radio folk from Voice of America, and one dedicated woman from Las Vegas who’d extended her Thanksgiving break just for this thing. Why wouldn’t more journalists want free training?

We started the morning with a panel of three journos actively engaged in covering the crisis. Interesting aside: There were two journos who looked to be in their late 20s or early 30s who had both gotten bachelor’s degrees in journalism from good schools and masters from better ones. Then the third guy, a 30-year veteran of print who’d recently moved to talk radio…had a bachelor’s of science in an unrelated field and a certificate. Gosh I hope people like him aren’t a dying breed. It’s not like I went to J-school either…

Here’s a loose transcript of what was said. I didn’t record it in any way and I hadn’t brought a laptop (knowing my own tendencies to get sucked into Wikipedia at just the wrong time), so this is everything I could write down. My shorthand is getting a lot better! But do note that none of this should be taken as verbatim quotes; it is mostly a paraphrase.

Jodi Schneider: Were there signs this was coming?

Maya Jackson Randall, Dow Jones Newswires: Paulson promised the stimulus package would fix the second half of 2008. When that didn’t happen..

Benton Ives, Congressional Quarterly: In August, when the treasury took over Fannie [May] and Freddie [Mac]. That was the first real sign.

JS: What are the challenges specific to covering this crisis?

MJR: The policy responses are very new. It’s still hard to understand what they mean. Even the talking heads don’t know what the impact will be. [She says she attends lots of technical briefings after press conferences just to learn what was just said.]

BI: The restructured AIG loan is “one of the most complex” I’ve ever seen. It’s easy to think you know what’s going to happen, but then the government is making up vast new responses. Most of my reporting is anticipation.

MJR: The government doesn’t have it together either. “Everybody is just…’We’re not going by a playbook.'”

BI: They really are making this stuff up.

Tom Temin, The Federal Drive: Nobody understands te types of financial instruments they are using. [He says they are “completely unconstitutional” in a fairly matter-of-fact way. Without getting too deeply into politics, I think that in a purely semantic sense he’s correct.]

JS: What stories do you suggest covering?

MJR: I’d be interested to look at what state and governments are doing about their budgets, especially not the ones angling for TARP [Troubled Assets Relief Program; the largest part of the $700 billion bailout] money.

BI: Congress may be the wrong body to be doing anything about this. Maybe 15-20% would give you an accurate description of yield spread. They’re doing their best, but a big deliberative body doesn’t do well with things that happen in two weeks.

TT:I would like to know how much Bush had a hand in this plan.

BI: “I think for one and a half months, Henry Paulson was president.”

Questions from the audience: What about Obama?

MKR: It’s becoming clear what he’s going to have to do. Stimulus plan and foreclosure relief.

TT: The appointees are very circumspect.

Another audience question: I live in a neighborhood with immigrants. Nine people live in one house. People shop at Walmart and Target. How does this trcikle down?

T: When credit is tight, businesses have less ability to operate. Prices are higher. Business is frozen.

BI: [Relying on] anecdote can be troubling. Washington’s housing market is relatively stable. But by the time everybody feels [troubled] it’s too late.

Last question: How do we know if it’s working?

TT: They don’t really have a metric. Decide what piece of the economy you care about and track that.

BI: Steer clear of short-term market fluctuations. Average home price is one of the key factors to watch.

The second seminar was about how to decode information on the FDIC’s web site. The good news with the FDIC is that their data is remarkably accurate, since the organization uses the same data that they provide to the public. The bad news is that their site is bureaucracy spaghetti. Just text everywhere and no sense of where to find information. One reporter there who’s been covering bank failures for her paper’s business section said that even she didn’t know how to find this information. But if you know where to look, and I’ll tell you in a second, you can get all sorts of information about a bank, even if it’s privately traded. The FDIC’s call reports will show exactly how many bad loans a bank has on its books, what percentage of its assets are mortgages, etcetera. The breadcrumb trail to follow from FDIC.gov is: Industry Analysis->Bank Data & Statistics->Institution Directory->Institutions. From there you can search by the name of your bank. It seems easy once you know what you’re doing, but take a look at that front:

Yarrr.

After lunch, we talked about ways to localize these stories. The recent news about local auto dealers going under made for interesting fodder, because as many have pointed out, auto dealers are usually sponsors of local groups. The Rotary Club, your local Girl Scouts troop, and the town Little League team usually get money from Joe’s Chevy or whatever. So there’s an (obvious) story right there. And almost anything can be localized, though some statistics aren’t tracked on anything more narrow than a state level.

The program ended with a Q&A, where our moderator, Wendell Cochran, lost me. The guy clearly knows what he’s doing as a reporter. But when he started talking about how free content is dead and the only way to save journalism is to charge for it…well, I exchanged a glance with the managing editor of the Examiner, sitting next to me, and rolled my eyes. Both free tabloids in DC are doing, y’know, pretty well. I don’t think a subscriber-only model is coming any time soon.