Reporters Appeal to Reader Connections in Tyco Case

Descriptions in court of a posh shower curtain and a lavish party on a Mediterranean island made the Tyco case more visible to the public than other recent corporate scandal trials.

But outside of that imagery, business reporters found themselves covering the trial much like they did those of HealthSouth, Adelphia Communications, or WorldCom.

Reporters applied many of the same skills and techniques that they use for everyday stories to the Tyco case. They found informed sources, attended key junctions of the trial and remained focused throughout their time in court, and explained clearly why the case was important to readers.

Ben White has covered several of the early 21st century corporate greed trials for The Washington Post, including the Tyco case -- which likely ended when a New York state judge handed down stiff sentences to former executives Dennis Kozlowski and Marc Swartz last week.

"There certainly was a voyeuristic aspect to it," White says, "which made it emblematic of corporate greed."

In his stories, White included details, such as the $6,000 shower curtain that Kozlowski hung in his New York apartment and the $2 million-plus party he threw for his wife on the island of Sardinia. They evoked clear images of the former CEO's greed and made the case "something that normal people could connect to," White says.

"People connect more with stuff they can easily understand," rather than the complexities of accounting fraud, a central theme of other corporate greed cases, White notes.

White and Tom Van Riper, who covered last Monday's sentencing for Forbes.com, say the media may have over-hyped the Tyco case because of those popular stories of greed. Their challenge was to keep the case in perspective.

They had help, both say, from legal sources who were instrumental in helping both reporters produce accurate, knowledgeable work. The attorneys arguing the case were obvious sources, but in some cases, they had to turn to outside legal experts.

"If you're doing something you haven't done before," Van Riper says, "it forces you to go out and find new sources�[who then] can become regulars."  

Van Riper needed to be aggressive because he pursued a unique angle to the Tyco sentencing story. He reported on the significance of the trial's presence in a state -- not federal -- court.

He chose this angle because other cases that were federally tried and, as he wrote in his piece, " Off To The Big House," the sentences Kozlowski received in New York "won't amount to the near-life sentence he would have likely received from the feds."

"We try to come up with some angles that aren't everywhere else, on our Web site," Van Riper says. "It goes a little beyond just the basic: 'What? When? Where? Why?' "