footnoted.org was launched in August 2003 (here’s the very first post) to coincide with the publication of the book, Financial Fine Print. Each day, the site takes a closer look at the things that companies try to bury in their routine SEC filings. Some posts are simply quirky little factoids (like the fact that Warren Buffett’s son relies on ConAgra for his health insurance) while others tend to focus on more serious issues, like aggressive accounting, excessive compensation or the type of questionable self dealing that can often be indicative of more serious problems at a company.

During the 2009 proxy season, footnoted.org had a special arrangement with The New York Times to contribute original reporting to Dealbook. Those posts can be found here.

By plowing through hundreds of filings a day (more during certain times of the year) and delivering original insight and analysis, footnoted.org has become a must read for professional money managers and analysts, as well as sophisticated individual investors and even a few journalists who often have very nice things to say about the site. Here are a few examples:

• There’s Gold in the Fine Print Kiplinger’s
• Must-reads in a Web 2.0 World Fortune Magazine
• Financial Blogs: Best of the Bunch Business Week
• Michelle Leder is a National Treasure Portfolio
• 50 Coolest Websites Time Magazine
• Best of Web 2007 Business Week
• Read the Financial Footnotes Courier Mail (Australia)
• Blogging the Footnotes National Post (Canada)
• In-Crowd Blogs The Wall Street Journal
• Best financial blogs CNN/Money

Video/Audio:

• Why Proxies are so Sexy (Morningstar.com)
• Fun with SEC Filings (CBS Moneywatch)
• Buried perks in 2008 (Marketplace Radio)
• Bank executive collect TARP and bonuses (WPIX TV)
• Bye Bye Bonuses Street Signs (CNBC TV)
• Do Shareholders Have Any Power?” (Marketplace Radio)
• Worst Perks of 2007 (Marketplace Radio)
• Corporate Sleuthing (CNBC TV)
• Michelle on Wallstrip
• Hearst New Media Lectures: The Changing Media Landscape (warning: about two hours long)

Editor/Founder:

Michelle Leder first became interested in SEC filings early in her career, while writing about a small Florida bank that was engaged in aggressive accounting during the last real estate boom. As a reporter, and later editor, she spent 10 years at daily newspapers in Florida, Connecticut and New York. As a freelance business journalist, her work has appeared in BusinessWeek, The New York Times, Portfolio and Slate, among others. Leder has appeared on Bloomberg TV, CNBC, the Today Show and has been quoted in dozens of newspapers both in the US and abroad, about digging into SEC filings. Financial Fine Print (John Wiley & Sons, 2003) is her first book. She holds a degree in Economics from Brandeis University. She blogs from footnoted.org world headquarters in Peekskill, NY, where she lives with her husband, Scott, their son, Soren, and dog, Kumara, whom she has trained to dig through SEC filings.

Senior Reporter:

Theo Francis has enjoyed rummaging through corporate filings since 2000, when he joined The Wall Street Journal to write about Texas stocks. He went on to cover everything from pension accounting and executive pay to hospitals and the life-insurance industry; articles he worked on received national recognition, including George Polk and Gerald Loeb awards, and he was part of a team that won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting for coverage of corporate scandals. In August 2008, he joined BusinessWeek as a Washington correspondent covering financial regulation, just a few weeks before the financial crisis reached its fever pitch. He holds two journalism degrees and has also worked at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in Little Rock, the Daily Record of Morris County, N.J., and the Petersburg (Alaska) Pilot. He lives inside the Beltway with his wife, Jennifer, and Miles, their cat, who shows no interest whatsoever in SEC filings unless they are smeared liberally with sardine oil. He can be reached at theo (at) footnoted.org

Reporter/Researcher:

Sonya Hubbard joined footnoted.org in July 2008 after earning her degree from UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, where her favorite classes focused on business and investigative reporting. Prior to getting her degree at Berkeley, Sonya practiced business law in Missouri and Kansas for a decade.  She heads up footnoted’s Midwest bureau in Overland Park, Kansas, where she lives with her husband and seven-year-old son. She reads the fine print herself since she has no pets and has not yet persuaded her son that reading SEC filings is more fun than playing video games. She can be reached at sonya (at) footnoted.org.

Senior Advisor:

Thornton “Ted” Oglove is the author of the book, Quality of Earnings, which was first published in 1987 and was based on the ground-breaking Wall Street research report that Oglove co-authored with Robert Olstein in the late 1960s and 1970s. Oglove, who continues to work as a consultant, lives with his wife, Susan, in San Francisco.

Design:

Jonathan Tessler, founder and creative director of The Complex, designed Footnoted.org’s site

David Martin of NolaFlash.com implemented the design as a WordPress template and hacked PHP for the new site.