Learning business story writing

I had a chance to shadow Julie Forster, reporter of Pioneer Press on employment, to report the release of unemployment figures on May 21. It was my first time here to shadow a business reporter. The process seemed simple and routine: We arrived at the meeting room, had a small talk with the business official and the release started. It's a kind of televised meeting, with some reporters calling in to ask questions. In China, it would be similar. But it turned out that the article is more interesting than I expected. Short as it is, it's not recording of dull figures and numbers, but a story told with a featurish lead to show the tricky time (the job market seems to be improving, but not for sure). In my home newspaper, we have tried to "tell stories" even when it is about drab economic figures while here I find featurish way of writing has become very common. It'll be a good learning process for me.
Part of my life here is to read my host newspaper to understand how they are doing stories. There is a series of stories about a Hmong young man who was shot dead by police. His families thought the police used "excessive force" to kill him. The newspaper has run a series of stories tracking the court hearings and jury ruling to show to the readers how the case is going by quoting both police and the dead man's families. What impressed me is the continuity of the reporting, which ensures readers know the whole process of what's going on. In those days, I often made a comparison between the case and the Deng Yujiao case － the No. 1 case now in China. I would think about what if I do the stories on Deng in China? What I can learn from the Pioneer Press series for doing the Deng stories?
On 28 May, I covered a Minneapolis Chamber of Commerce release of business vitality index, which compared the business environment of Minneapolis-St Paul metropolitan area with ten other major areas across the country. I've done a short story on that and is waiting for reponse from my editor.
The next day, I interviewed a professor of Concordia University of St Paul on the consumption habits of Africa-born immigrants in the US. Hopefully I'll go on to interview some immigrants and business people to see how those immigrants would have a bearing on local economy. I'll discuss it with my editor Monday.