footnoted.org was launched in August 2003 (here’s the very first post) to coincide with the publication of the book, Financial Fine Print. Each day, the site takes a closer look at the things that companies try to bury in their routine SEC filings. Some posts are simply quirky little factoids (like the fact that Warren Buffett’s son relies on ConAgra for his health insurance) while others tend to focus on more serious issues, like aggressive accounting, excessive compensation or the type of questionable self dealing that can often be indicative of more serious problems at a company.

During the 2009 proxy season, footnoted.org had a special arrangement with The New York Times to contribute original reporting to Dealbook. Those posts can be found here.

By plowing through hundreds of filings a day (more during certain times of the year) and delivering original insight and analysis, footnoted.org has become a must read for professional money managers and analysts, as well as sophisticated individual investors and even a few journalists who often have very nice things to say about the site. Here are a few examples:

• Must-reads in a Web 2.0 World Fortune Magazine
• Financial Blogs: Best of the Bunch Business Week
• Michelle Leder is a National Treasure Portfolio
• 50 Coolest Websites Time Magazine
• Best of Web 2007 Business Week
• Read the Financial Footnotes Courier Mail (Australia)
• Must-Read Bloggers Kiplinger’s Personal Finance
• Blogging the Footnotes National Post (Canada)
• In-Crowd Blogs The Wall Street Journal
• Best financial blogs CNN/Money
• Blogging for Dollars Business Week

Video/Audio:

• Buried perks in 2008 (Marketplace Radio)
• Bank executive collect TARP and bonuses (WPIX TV)
• Bye Bye Bonuses Street Signs (CNBC TV)
• Do Shareholders Have Any Power?” (Marketplace Radio)
• Worst Perks of 2007 (Marketplace Radio)
• Corporate Sleuthing (CNBC TV)
• Michelle on Wallstrip
• Hearst New Media Lectures: The Changing Media Landscape (warning: about two hours long)

Editor/Founder:

Michelle Leder first became interested in SEC filings early in her career, while writing about a small Florida bank that was engaged in aggressive accounting during the last real estate boom. As a reporter, and later editor, she spent 10 years at daily newspapers in Florida, Connecticut and New York. As a freelance business journalist, her work has appeared in BusinessWeek, The New York Times, Portfolio and Slate, among others. Leder has appeared on Bloomberg TV, CNBC, the Today Show and has been quoted in dozens of newspapers both in the US and abroad, about digging into SEC filings. Financial Fine Print (John Wiley & Sons, 2003) is her first book. She holds a degree in Economics from Brandeis University. She blogs from footnoted.org world headquarters in Peekskill, NY, where she lives with her husband, Scott, and dog, Kumara, whom she has trained to dig through SEC filings.

Reporter/Researcher:

Sonya Hubbard earned a degree in May 2008 from UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, where her favorite classes focused on business and investigative reporting. Prior to chasing her dream to be a writer, she graduated from a not-so-fancypants law school in a famous swing state and practiced business litigation for a decade. She now works as a freelancer in Overland Park, Kansas, where she lives with her husband and five-year-old son. She reads the fine print herself since she has no pets and has not yet persuaded her son that SEC filings are more fun than playing with Pokemon cards. She can be reached at sonya (at) footnoted.org.

Intern:

Kristen Scholer is a junior at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism where she serves as Editor-in-Chief of the Northwestern Business Review. Before moving to the Windy City two years ago, Kristen grew up in Iowa where, surprisingly, her days didn’t consist of plowing the fields and feeding livestock. Rather, Kristen spent most of her free time dancing – a passion of hers that comes third only to business reporting and cheese fries.

Senior Advisor:

Thornton “Ted” Oglove is the author of the book, Quality of Earnings, which was first published in 1987 and was based on the ground-breaking Wall Street research report that Oglove co-authored with Robert Olstein in the late 1960s and 1970s. Oglove, who continues to work as a consultant, lives with his wife, Susan, in San Francisco.

Coding/Development:

Laura McDonald and her husband/business partner Mauricio Portasio of Dynabytes.com implemented the subscription-based membership system for FootnotedPro and provide ongoing site maintenance. They live in central Texas with their cat Annabelle who has been meticulously trained in the art of PHP programming, but usually prefers sleeping on the keyboard to doing anything useful.

Design:

Jonathan Tessler, founder and creative director of The Complex, designed Footnoted.org’s site

David Martin of NolaFlash.com implemented the design as a Word Press template and hacked PHP for the new site.