Knight-Wallace Fellows/Graham Hovey Lecture September 17, 2009

Christopher Carey, founding editor and president of Sharesleuth.com, a pioneering investigative business journalism website, will deliver the 24th Graham Hovey Lecture, “Going It Alone Online: It Worked for Me” at 5:00 p.m. September 17 at Wallace House, 620 Oxford Road.

Carey designed his project for developing “independent Web-based reporting aimed at exposing securities fraud and corporate chicanery” while a Knight-Wallace Fellow (2005-06). Sharesleuth, now the leading website in the field, is a direct outgrowth of his study topic during his year of sabbatical exploration: “The Criminal Subculture in the U.S. Securities Industry.’’ Carey had been a business reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch where he wrote a highly regarded series on global stock fraud in June 2004. Those stories, he says, helped him win the journalism fellowship at the University of Michigan (U-M).

While at Wallace House, Carey approached billionaire businessman and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban via email to underwrite his idea. Cuban was interested and became the majority partner in the venture. The website was launched in July 2006, two months after the end of Carey’s fellowship. In October 2008, a second website, Bailoutsleuth.com, was launched to “track the government's purchase, and eventual sale, of bad mortgages and other distressed assets.”

Named for a previous director of the Knight-Wallace Fellows program, the lecture honors alumni whose subsequent careers exemplify the benefits of sabbatical studies at U-M.

The lecture is open to the public. A reception hosted by John L. King, Vice Provost for Academic Information, will follow the lecture. For more information and to RSVP, call (734) 998-7666.

Carey graduated from Indiana University and worked at several newspapers including the Messenger-Inquirer in Owensboro, Kentucky, the Orlando Sentinel, the Indianapolis Star, and finally the Post-Dispatch. He is the recipient of numerous regional, state and national awards, including first-place honors in the Society of American Business Editors and Writers.

Official Website: http://www.mjfellows.org/