Niemanwatchdog.org offers ideas on covering the collapse

Niemanwatchdog.org is launching a project to help journalists do a better job of covering the economic collapse. As Barry Sussman, editor of the Nieman Watchdog Project, explains: "News organizations too often lose sight of the issues and focus on politics.... With some exceptions, that’s what has happened in covering the economic collapse. Thus, citizens and voters are consistently left with little sense of their own interests, or the country’s....

"In the coming weeks, we will be running articles by independent experts or interviews with them, pointing editors and reporters to basic issues and to questions they should ask."

The project kicks off with a piece by Henry Banta called “Doing a Better Job Coping with Economic Disaster” and an interview of economist James Galbraith by writer John Hanrahan.

The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University, through its Watchdog Project, "seeks to encourage more informed reporting by putting journalists in contact with authorities who can suggest appropriate, probing questions and who can serve as resources."