Registration Continues for March 19-21 Gathering of SABEW Members at ASU’s Cronkite School in Phoenix

PHOENIX, Nov. 13 – The man whom Time magazine called “the Solomon of settlement,” Kenneth Feinberg, will speak to the Society of American Business Editors and Writers’ 2010 national conference here in March, SABEW announced today.

President Obama appointed the acclaimed mediator in June as special master for executive compensation, and he has become known in the mass media as the White House’s “compensation czar,” with sweeping authority over the compensation given to executives of corporations receiving federal bailout money.

In late October, Feinberg announced that 25 of the highest-ranking executives at seven firms receiving large amounts of tax dollars would see their “average cash compensation” cut by an average of 90 percent from what they were in 2008. The Wall Street Journal reported that average cash compensation involves several areas, “including base salaries, a share of company profits, commissions, retention payments and other guaranteed cash payouts.”

The seven companies are AIG, Bank of America, Chrysler, Chrysler Financial, Citigroup, General Motors and GMAC.

“Ken Feinberg’s recent decisions have been hotly debated in corporate boardrooms, Congress and the press,” said SABEW President Greg McCune, training editor at Thomson-Reuters. “His presentation in Phoenix will be well timed for SABEW members just before the spring proxy filing season, when corporations disclose executive compensation data and the business press traditionally focuses on the issue.”

Time’s Nov. 2 issue contained a story by the magazine’s Stephen Gandel that said Feinberg, 64, “holds a unique position in American society. He decides what people – their pain as well as their day-to-day roles – are worth. Appointed 25 years ago to distribute about $200 million to Vietnam vets poisoned by the herbicide Agent Orange, he has become the Solomon of settlement.”

Feinberg’s other well-known assignments include those as administrator of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund and, in the wake of the shocking 2007 shootings at Virginia Tech, as fund administrator for the Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund.

In 2005, Feinberg’s book, “What is Life Worth?”, was published by Public Affairs Press.

Feinberg is the second major speaker to be secured to appear at the Phoenix conference. Ricardo Salinas Pliego, chairman of one of Mexico’s biggest business conglomerates, has agreed to be a keynote speaker.

Salinas Pliego, chairman of Mexico’s Grupo Salinas, ranked in 63rd place on the 2010 Forbes magazine list of the world’s richest people. He will provide real-world insights about the integration of businesses in the Americas, including concrete examples of his personal successes and failures in the region. He’ll also offer suggestions on ways to boost trade and investment both in North America and across the hemisphere, based on the track record of his varied companies.

The Phoenix conference is expected to draw about 300 business-news journalists to Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, which is also the new home of SABEW’s national headquarters. The conference planning committee is working on three tracks: technology, immigration/international trade and skills training. ASU’s fantastic facilities allow for hands-on computer sessions that will allow us to learn skills we can take home and put immediately to use.

Skills and technology training sessions will include: a hands-on Twitter session, understanding numbers for journalists, podcasting, better business visuals, better writing; covering energy, stimulus spending, real estate and state budgets; finding sources within companies, and self-publishing your own business book.

The day before the conference, ASU’s Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism will host a daylong session on basic broadcasting skills. And the morning the conference begins, the center will conduct a half-day session on how to be interviewed on camera without looking, well, like a newspaper reporter.

Registration for the conference is now open.  Register here.  The conference fee is $299 per person.

For more on SABEW, visit: http://sabew.org/. For more on Kenneth Feinberg, visit: http://www.feinbergrozen.com/. For conference information, contact SABEW executive director Warren Watson in Phoenix at 602-496-5186 or at wats...@asu.edu.

Tentative Conference Schedule

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