Ann Arbor, Nov. 12—To provide a competitive edge in the roiling journalism job market, the Knight-Wallace Fellows program has issued each participant a “backpack” of multi-platform gear to complement intensive training by a team from the Poynter Institute. Equipment includes professional-quality video cameras and audio equipment used in the four-day course ending Friday, and is intended to be taken back to work when fellows leave the University of Michigan.

The initiative comes in advance of the group’s news tours in Argentina, Brazil and Russia with news organization partners Clarin, Folha de Sao Paulo and Novaya Gazeta.

“Just as we want to emphasize the value of stories beyond U.S. borders, we also think Knight-Wallace Fellows should return to work with essential tools and new technical mastery,” said Fellowships director Charles R. Eisendrath. “New story-telling techniques require new hardware.”

24th Graham Hovey Lecture
“Going It Alone Online: It Worked for Me”
5:00 p.m. September 17
Wallace House, 620 Oxford Road

Investigative Business Reporter Lectures on His “.com” Innovation for Exposing Stock Fraud and White-Collar Crime

Christopher Carey, founding editor and president of Sharesleuth.com, a pioneering investigative business journalism website, will deliver the 24th Graham Hovey Lecture, “Going It Alone Online: It Worked for Me” at 5:00 p.m. September 17 at Wallace House, 620 Oxford Road.

Carey designed his project for developing “independent Web-based reporting aimed at exposing securities fraud and corporate chicanery” while a Knight-Wallace Fellow (2005-06). Sharesleuth, now the leading website in the field, is a direct outgrowth of his study topic during his year of sabbatical exploration: “The Criminal Subculture in the U.S. Securities Industry.’’ Carey had been a business reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch where he wrote a highly regarded series on global stock fraud in June 2004. Those stories, he says, helped him win the journalism fellowship at the University of Michigan (U-M).

While at Wallace House, Carey approached billionaire businessman and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban via email to underwrite his idea. Cuban was interested and became the majority partner in the venture. The website was launched in July 2006, two months after the end of Carey’s fellowship. In October 2008, a second website, Bailoutsleuth.com, was launched to “track the government's purchase, and eventual sale, of bad mortgages and other distressed assets.”

Named for a previous director of the Knight-Wallace Fellows program, the lecture honors alumni whose subsequent careers exemplify the benefits of sabbatical studies at U-M.

The lecture is open to the public. A reception hosted by John L. King, Vice Provost for Academic Information, will follow the lecture. For more information and to RSVP, call (734) 998-7666.

Carey graduated from Indiana University and worked at several newspapers including the Messenger-Inquirer in Owensboro, Kentucky, the Orlando Sentinel, the Indianapolis Star, and finally the Post-Dispatch. He is the recipient of numerous regional, state and national awards, including first-place honors in the Society of American Business Editors and Writers.

Past Conferences

• “TALK SHOW DEMOCRACY: The Funny Part”
• “The Serious Study of Humor – What is It? and Why is It?”
• “Covering the New Secrecy: The Press and Public Policy”