"Business reporters and shareholders in companies from countries with high levels of corruption should pay close attention to the way large, Russian state-controlled companies are run and take a bolder stance against these pernicious practices.”

— Alexey Navalny and Maxim Trudolyubov, Nieman Reports, Spring 2011

Journalists should not assume that they automatically will be admitted to annual meetings, though they usually are. Outsiders, including the press, have no legal right to attend, unless they own shares. Some reporters — if their organizations allow it — as well as shareholder activists have gotten around this challenge by buying just one or two shares in a company, simply to be admitted to the annual meeting.

Others simply work around the meeting, interviewing shareholders and others near the site or by telephone afterward.

“Sunshine is the best disinfectant, and companies that have nothing to hide welcome the press,” Nell Minow, then editor of the watchdog Corporate Library, told The New York Times in 2005 after a company barred a Times reporter from its annual meeting.

Yahoo! Inc. drew the critics’ wrath in 2001 when it refused to allow reporters to attend its annual meeting. Shareholders could listen to the meeting over the Internet. However, journalists complained that the ban inhibited their access to shareholders and prevented them from having a full sense of the meeting’s tenor.

In recent years, more companies have held Internet-only annual meetings. Critics say this is just another way for companies to muffle dissent and insulate themselves from shareholders. Corporate officers, though, say the online meetings can attract more shareholder interest and give more people a chance to attend.

Another reason for attending annual meetings is to keep track of “gadfly” shareholders — activists who advocate for change within a company, often by showing up at annual meetings and pressuring management and the board on their favorite issues or causes.

Some journalists shy away from gadflies, seeing them as more likely to be pests than sources, but gadflies often shine a light on questionable practices and board failings.

Often, the first inkling of a major issue within a company comes from a gadfly shareholder proposal, so most business reporters cultivate sources among gadflies, while remaining wary.