Posted on: Sunday, May 1, 2005

AFTER DEADLINE

By Anne Harpham
Advertiser Senior Editor

Regular readers of our Business section will have noticed a change this year in how we report company earnings.

In January, we switched to a grid format for corporate earnings stories in an effort to make it easier for readers to quickly understand what is driving a company's profits or losses.

Earnings stories are, of course, numbers-driven, and most readers who are interested in earnings reports want to get to the heart of the matter.

That's what a grid format allows. News stories full of numbers can sometimes be difficult to follow, which is why we often put numbers into a chart or graphic in addition to a story.

A grid combines aspects of both.

Advertiser assistant business editor Alan Yonan says the grid allows us to organize the information in four categories:

• The key numbers in the earnings report, such as net income and earnings per share. We include not only the quarterly or annual numbers, but the percentage change from the previous comparable period.

• The reasons behind the numbers. For example, in the report Tuesday on Hawaiian Electric Industries' first-quarter earnings, we noted that lower profits in the electric utility subsidiary more than offset earnings gains at the American Savings Bank unit.

• What company officials and analysts are saying about the report.

• Issues that could affect the company's earnings going forward.

The change in format does not mean we don't think earnings reports merit stories.

To the contrary, we believe earnings are of great interest, and we are trying to make it easier for busy readers to get to the information they need to have.

Fixing glitches

Last Sunday, the lead story in the Focus section was a thoughtful commentary by Michael Novak on Pope Benedict XVI that unfortunately was marred by two serious glitches.

The end of the last sentence on the cover was missing as was the end of the last sentence of the story. We published corrections on Sunday and Monday.

Both pages had been proofread, and the story was complete at that point both in the computer system and on the page proofs.

After the pages had been proofread, the page designer called them up on a computer to send them for processing. At that point, our computer system for an unknown reason caused a shift in the position of the stories on the page. That caused the front-page text and the jump page text to cut off prematurely.

When page designers fix errors in stories, they check to see that the changes did not cause a runover of type. There was no reason to check on those pages because the page designer had not touched the stories.

As a result of last week's problems, page designers must double-check jumps, jump lines, headlines and text even if they have not made changes.

Senior editor Anne Harpham is The Advertiser's reader representative. Reach her at aharpham@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8033.