(reprint) Greg Ip - How to be an Economics Reporter

Greg Ip - How to be an
Economics Reporter
Notes on the craft of economics journalism: types
and examples of economics stories. By Greg Ip
https://gregip.wordpress.com/economics-reporting/

1) Indicators/developments
The main thing readers want to know about the economy is
what is happening to it. They are investors, workers,
managers and business owners and need to know whether
the economy is in recession or expanding, if inflation is rising
or falling, whether consumers are spending. If you take up
economics reporting you will, early in your career, write
indicator stories. Lots of them, like this one. And they will be
reasonably well read. Here’s a report on an indicator that
spins forward with some implications for economic policy.
Greg Ip - How to be an Economics Reporter https://gregip.wordpress.com/economics-reporting/

2) Outlook
Next to what has happened to the economy the next most important job of
economics reporting is to predict what happens next. This is harder
because the future is unknowable. Typically, you quote lots of experts with
differing forecasts for balance. You emphasize the consensus because
outliers seem less convincing and are sometimes a bit odd. As a reporter,
you typically try not to take a position, although that can make for a dull
story lacking conviction. If you take a stand you risk being wrong, as I
turned out to be with this story though I rather liked it at the time. In this
article I take a crack at 2010. It would be nice for our predictions to be
right, but it’s more important they be interesting. So you take a view, back
it up as well as you can, add some too-be-sure, and let the reader decide
for him or herself.

3) Illustrated economic trends
We document the economy with numbers but numbers are dry.
The best economic reporting puts names on the numbers. Paul
Blustein of the Washington Post managed to illustrate one of the
most important but abstract economic forces of the last decade –
global imbalances – with real people: a frugal motorcycle
manufacturer from Korea and his high living American importer.
(His article, published 19 November 2005, is reprinted below) .
Finding numbers is easy; finding people to illustrate those numbers
is hard. I spent about a month tracking down the people for a story
on changes in economic mobility. In the process I discovered there
is no such thing as a typical family.

4) Economic Policy Developments
The economy is made up of countless uncoordinated decisions by workers,
investors and companies. Governments try to influence this activity, however,
through monetary policy (actions by the Federal Reserve), fiscal policy (changes
in government lending, spending and taxes) and regulatory policy (such as rules
over how banks should lend). Economic policy involves both economics and
politics as anyone covering fiscal policy in the last year will tell you, because even
when the policy in question is aimed at boosting the economy, the decisions are
deeply political. The Federal Reserve is more of a purely economic story because
its decisions are principally governed by the economic outlook. As on any beat a
Fed reporter tries to scoop his competitors on what happens next although it is
inherently riskier because the sources are almost always anonymous and the
decisions can change after your story runs.The Fed has become a more political
story because it used creative and controversial tools during the crisis that have
attracted greater political scrutiny. This article dissects how the Fed now exists in
a more political realm.

5) Economic policy institutions & people
William Blundell, a legendary page one editor of The Wall Street Journal
and author of The Art and Craft of Feature Writing, liked to say that
readers most want to read about animals, people and numbers, in that
order. There are a lot of numbers and not many animals on the economics
beat. Thankfully, there are a few people and so you write about them a lot,
with the aim of telling a good yarn while also showing how with they arrive
at their decisions and their consequences. In this article from 2004, I
sought to show how Alan Greenspan’s libertarian roots and anti-regulatory
philosophy had exercised an important but relatively unknown influence,
in contrast to his much better known role as central banker. This profile of
Larry Summers in the New Yorker serves as a vehicle for explaining the
early economic policy decisions of the Obama Administration. If you have
the time, it’s superb.

6) Conceptual Scoops
Paul Steiger used to say there are scoops of facts and scoops of
ideas. Since it’s hard to get a scoop on next year’s GDP,
economics reporters must usually content themselves with
scoops of ideas. This often means spotting a trend in the
economic data before anyone else does. Kelly Evans of The
Wall Street Journal does this nicely by noting that women now
represent half of the employed. This article noted that the falling
deficit then being trumpeted as a sign of the success of Bush
economic policies was actually a result of growing income
inequality.

7) High Concept Stories
Economics reporters sometimes report on economics, not just the
economy. At this level it comes to resemble science reporting as
you delve into the ideas that drive economics and how they are
changing. The Economist’s article (written by my colleague Simon
Cox) on the failures of macroeconomics is an excellent example.
(“The other-worldly philosophers,” 18 July 2009). These are among
the hardest to write because they often deal with highly abstract
concepts and shifts in thinking whose importance is only evident to
experts. I would also put into this category many economics
columns which argue over the assumptions underlying government
policy.

(reprint) Greg Ip - How to be an Economics Reporter

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(reprint) Greg Ip - How to be an Economics Reporter