Sharesleuth
Available inEnglish
URLsharesleuth.com
Launched2006[1]
Current statusActive

Sharesleuth is an investigative reporting website, created to investigate and report on instances of alleged securities fraud and corporate malfeasance.[2][3] It was founded in July 2006 by American businessman Mark Cuban and business reporter Chris Carey, formerly of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.[1]

History

Sharesleuth founder Mark Cuban

In early 2006, Carey approached Cuban with the idea of launching an investigative organization focusing on corporate fraud.[1] Cuban was receptive to the idea, and offered to finance the venture.[1] Within its first year, Sharesleuth articles on the publicly traded companies Xethanol and UTEK were followed by drops of over 35% in the stock price of each company.[1] Sharesleuth has since reported on many other companies, including Kandi Technologies[4] and Highland Mint, a firm that manufactured the coins used in the Super Bowl pre-game coin toss.[5]

As a means of funding the site, Cuban typically shorts the stocks of the article subjects prior to publication,[6] a practice which has drawn controversy.[7][8][1] He has stated that the site has published articles on "literally anything that I have shorted".[9]

In October 2008, Cuban and Carey started a companion website, BailoutSleuth, for the purpose of tracking Troubled Asset Relief Program funds and bank activity in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and resulting bank bailouts.[2] Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists Gary Cohn of The Baltimore Sun and Russell Carollo of the Dayton Daily News were hired in 2009–2010, the latter to handle Freedom of Information Act requests.[2] Unlike the for-profit Sharesleuth, BailoutSleuth was conceived as a nonprofit service.[2] The site is no longer online.

In mid-2010 Cuban and Carey created another nonprofit website, JunketSleuth.com, to provide access to government travel spending records.[2][10] As with Sharesleuth, Cuban provided the funding and Carey served as the investigative reporter.[10] The site has since closed.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Gray, Patricia B. (September 25, 2007). "Owner Mark Cuban Trades Stocks on Sharesleuth's Findings Before They're Published". Wired. Retrieved November 20, 2018.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Brownback, Abby (2010). "Tracking the Junkets". American Journalism Review. No. June/July 2010. Retrieved November 20, 2018.
  3. ↑ Sager, Mike (November 17, 2008). "Mark Cuban: What I've Learned". Esquire. Retrieved November 21, 2018.
  4. ↑ Konrad, Tom (May 31, 2013). "Kandi Technologies: Weighing The Evidence". Forbes. Retrieved November 20, 2018.
  5. ↑ Hannan, Caleb (February 2, 2016). "The Super Bowl Coin Toss Has a Dark Secret". Bloomberg News. Retrieved November 21, 2018.
  6. ↑ Shaban, Hamza (February 5, 2014). "What Has Become of Business Journalism?". The New Yorker. Retrieved November 21, 2018.
  7. ↑ Fox, Justin (May 2014). "A New Golden Age for Media?". The Atlantic. Retrieved November 20, 2018.
  8. ↑ Salmon, Felix (April 25, 2012). "When is a scoop non-public information?". Reuters. Archived from the original on April 27, 2012. Retrieved November 20, 2018.
  9. ↑ "CNBC Transcript: Mark Cuban Speaks with CNBC'S Scott Wapner Today". CNBC. August 13, 2018. Retrieved November 20, 2018.
  10. 1 2 Bomey, Nathan (October 23, 2011). "Ann Arbor journalist launches government travel tracking website funded by Mark Cuban". The Ann Arbor News. Retrieved November 20, 2018.

Further reading

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