It's the Economy, Readers

Reporters have no shortage of indicators to build a story around when reporting on the economy, whether locally or nationally.

Job creation, consumer spending, the unemployment rate, jobless claims, housing starts, wage growth and bankruptcies are but a few.

But which ones are more likely to tell the tale?

There is no simple answer.

Enterprising reporters who cover the economy generally say they want to relate their stories to readers' lives.

That usually means building a story around a human element rather than a leading indicator.

So rather than try to provide a laundry list of the most meaningful indicators, let a few economy writers explain which stories they wrote within the past year and why they chose to write them.

Aldo Svaldi covers the economy for The Denver Post, a beat he has been cultivating since 1992. In the past year, he's done stories on charitable giving based on tax return data, per capita income based on zip codes and the prevalence of home foreclosures in the Denver area.

"I try not to overwhelm the reader with numbers but I include them," he said. "And we include links in our stories so the reader can do further research."

Svaldi follows every economic indicator he can but that doesn't mean he writes about each one. He just wants to get a sense of where the economy is headed and ask intelligent questions of economists.

Dan Voorhis, a staff writer on the business desk for The Wichita Eagle in Kansas, covers regional bellweather industries as a way of tracking the local economy. He's written about jobless rates, wage differentials and economic growth. But a major ongoing story for him is staying on top of the aerospace industry.

"Our economy is dominated by aircraft manufacturing, which tends to be cyclical," he said. "So you can track part of economy by how aircraft sales are going."

He advises economy reporters to study the makeup of an area's workforce before settling on coverage priorities.

"Part of my job is thinking about how the economy is evolving," he said.

Giving readers insight on what is happening that may affect them is always the goal.

"A story that tells people the unemployment rate dropped to 4 percent from 5 percent may not mean much," he said. "But if you tell them 10,000 new jobs were created last month it allows them to gain a different view of their local economy."

Louis Aguilar of the Detroit News keeps big themes in mind when writing economy stories but gets at those themes through human impact stories. Although he's currently on special assignment covering the labor negotiations between General Motors and the United Auto Workers union, his previous economy stories reported on the changing rules in the housing market, efforts to revive the city's downtown through attracting the "Creative Class," and the ongoing manufacturing job losses Detroit has faced for the past decade or so.

"Because it's such a vague subject, I try to pick subjects based on what people understand," he said.

Discussions with his editors on what to cover often focus on how to denote changes in the economy. While that could come through a report, the key is putting a face to the stats.

"When the economy is bad like it is here, it becomes a political and personal issue for readers," he says.

After all, good reporting on any subject, much less one as broad as the economy, should try and make it personal for readers.