Take Ownership of Your Business Page

By Lois Whitehead, Public Relations Manager

A recent Sunday edition of The New York Times featured articles covering a range of hot-button business issues, including the need for clarity in proxy statements, the granting of options, the confusion of pro forma numbers and the manner in which executive compensation is calculated. In order for readers to make sense of such complicated issues, the journalist needs to have a pretty good understanding of what he or she is writing about. That is where you, as a CPA, financial expert and member of the New York State Society of CPAs, can play a crucial role.

Now’s the time to take advantage of the stories that are making the news and put your skills on display. For example, take a look at former NYSSCPA President Nancy Newman-Limata, who last year authored four articles about financial statements that ran in the New York Post.  (To view the articles, go to www.nysscpa.org/sound_advice/archive.htm.)

There are a lot of finance-related issues journalists are covering that could greatly benefit from your insight. We can work with you to talk to your local paper’s business editor and let him or her know that you are available for interviews or even a single quote or comment. Let’s have more articles published that profile your firm and your business acumen.

Get Involved

It’s earnings season, and investors are looking much more closely at reported numbers. Take a moment and ask yourself, “Do they really understand the figures they are reviewing?” “Do they know what earnings per share represent?” “Do they have an understanding of how a price/earnings ratio is calculated?” “Do reporters writing about these items really have an adequate understanding of them?” Your availability to the media can make a big difference in the quality of the copy that readers of your local business page are going to for answers.

Wire services and other top media outlets are assigning more journalists to the finance beat. Many of them have little, if any, financial experience, and are lost in all of the numbers. The Society holds a course called “Understanding Financial Statements” that has helped over 150 journalists in the past year. Our next series of course sessions—there are basic, intermediate and advanced levels—begins on June 10 at the Society’s offices in midtown Manhattan. To make certain reporters in your geographic area are aware of the educational opportunity, consider having your local NYSSCPA chapter sponsor a course. Your chapter may have an accounting professor within its membership who could serve as instructor, or, if not, a local college or university accounting professor would make a good community partner.

The course includes the presentation, an outline for each session and the latest annual reports and proxy statements for the journalists attending. The Society also awards a certificate of completion to those journalists who go to all three sessions.

“Financial statements have become opaque and much harder to understand. The journalists are effusive in appreciation that our program exists,” said NYSSCPA board member and course instructor Philip Wolitzer. “News services hire good journalism students, but most have not taken any business courses, much less an accounting course. They are grateful for the background we give them.”

If you would like help writing an article for your local newspaper or sponsoring a local course series on understanding financial statements, call the NYSSCPA Public Relations Department at 212-719-8405 or 212-719-8364. The business of CPAs is the heart of the business pages. Help us place more Society members and their expertise within those pages.