Building Economic Literacy

By Andre Jackson
October 9, 2008

What a year for business journalism! No longer do deep-dive stories on the economy draw yawns during news meetings. Thanks to mega-shocks rattling Wall Street and reverberating far from financial capitals, editors and – more importantly, readers – can’t get enough of economic news these days.

Everywhere you turn, people don’t seem to tire of talking about the economy. That’s easy to understand from a consumer-behavior standpoint. After all, every family jogs in some fashion on the economy’s treadmill.

While most everybody talks (or grouses) about how our nation and world are faring from a pocketbook point-of-view, many, if not most, people struggle to understand what our economy is really about. What makes it go -- or not go? What happens when an economic indicator nosedives -- or rockets upward? What are the interlocking relationships between the big-dollar buzzwords we hear and read about 24/7?

Providing insight into the economy provides readers with a valuable service, one they’ll snap up in these troubled times of multiple corporate failures and foreclosure signs scarring neighborhoods across the land.

Unwinding and elegantly explaining the economic story requires some knowledge and skill. Like any other skill, it can be learned relatively easily if you’re willing to invest some time and sweat equity in pursuing this specialized knowledge. With some initiative, open-mindedness and the right training resources, most any solid reporter can become a competent business journalist.

Journalists should have at least a layman’s knowledge of what they’re writing about. At big news organizations, hopefully there’s an econ expert or two on staff.  But if you’re in a smaller shop without business reporters, or if you’re a reporter on another desk who doesn’t know economist-speak, you can make yourself more valuable in the eyes of your editors if you learn some business journalism basics. Showing such initiative could pay off nicely at annual review time.

Providing even a Cliffs Notes-like guide to the economy is beyond the scope of this column, but I’ll offer a few suggestions to help you tackle dive into biz reporting lite.

A good place to begin is by regularly reading roundup stories on the economy. The major wire services move a broad-brush take once or more each weekday. If your newsroom lacks access to the Associated Press, Bloomberg, Dow Jones or ThomsonReuters wires, you can often find these stories on Yahoo! Finance and other Web sites, including those of the wire services themselves. Make a point to look up words and terms that’re unfamiliar to you.

Looking up financial buzzwords is usually pretty painless if you have a couple of business reference books close by. I’m not talking about MBA-level treatises on how to parse each factor in an investment pricing formula. That’s overkill and likely impenetrable Greek to many journalists.

Rather, I’m talking about books that will help you quickly learn the meanings of terms, formulas and words that are routinely tossed about by sources and the Wall Street media corps. See this list of books that have been useful to me through the years.

When you’re ready to move beyond self-learning, then look into formal training that’s available in business journalism. Options range from webcasts to daylong workshops and multi-day conferences.

For example, the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism offers frequent, and free, workshops around the country. Their sessions are targeted to groups ranging from business newbies to seasoned journalists looking to enhance already-deep skillsets.

The Society of American Business Editors and Writers (SABEW) produces many workshops and panel sessions during its annual conferences. SABEW also offers periodic conference calls on various topics, such as covering bankruptcies and bank failures.

With all the resources out there, it’s not difficult to discover and master the basics of business journalism in a cost-effective way. The major cost will often be your own time. Think of the time spent as an investment in your career. Given the demand for business journalists today, I’m pretty sure the investment will pay off.

*Click here for Andre's list of recommended books.

Copyright © 2008 Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism