Journalist's Toolbox Business Tools I: Google Finance

April 19, 2022

Apr 19

Using Google Finance to Track Real-Time Stock Prices

Editor’s note: This is the first in a three-part series on tools and tips for covering business stories.

I always make time in my journalism classes at UIC to teach my students some business reporting skills. I walk them through covering consumer retail, how to investigate public and private companies, and non-profits.

I also spend some time on the stock market, and one of the best tools to get them engaged is Google Finance.

I have them set up a watchlist of a mock portfolio and track the stocks and their progress, write about the changes and even listen in to quarterly or annual earnings reports. It’s a valuable skill that serves them well in many professions, not just journalism.

Another skill I cover with Google Finance is scraping. You can write many spreadsheet scripts with the =googlefinance formula that will track real-time prices, price/earnings ratio, 52-week highs and lows and much more. You can even set up scrapers in Google Sheets to track historical stock data on a daily, weekly and monthly basis.

Want to learn how to do it? Just watch the video below and complete the exercise.

Around the Web

FigJam
A great whiteboard tool for developing projects and concepts.

Roam Research
Bi-directional linking that assists with note-taking and research.

ProCreate
iPad app for drawing and animated videos. Very popular among illustrators. Runs about $10.

Cool Tool Tuesday

Don’t forget that at 1 p.m. CT each Tuesday, we feature a new resource on #cooltooltuesday, like you see in our Around the Web section of this newsletter. Be sure to check it out and retweet it. Here’s a video of some of my past faves:

In Quotes …

“Journalism allows its readers to witness history; fiction gives its readers an opportunity to live it.” -- John Hersey

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