Editor & Publisher’s “Reporting On” series takes readers inside the day-to-day work of reporters tasked with covering crises and sweeping public policy issues. This month, we focus on the U.S. economy, with the sage perspective of three veteran economic reporters, to learn how their career paths led them to this reporting specialty, to better understand the challenges of communicating complex, data-driven stories, and how politics come into play.
On air: The U.S. economy
Scott Horsley’s career in radio began in high school. He worked at a local station on a teen-hosted news magazine show. It aired at 5 a.m. on Sunday mornings, not exactly “prime time,” Horsley recalled. Still, he counted an insomniac neighbor and a scouting buddy setting out to go hunting with his family among his audience. Horsley went on to work at his college radio station. While still in college, he landed a summer gig in production for National Public Radio’s (NPR) Morning Edition.
Since 2017, Horsley has been NPR’s chief economics correspondent. He comes to the role after a couple of decades working for both public media and commercial radio, covering economic policy during the Obama and Trump Administrations. He also found time at night to earn his MBA.
Horsley's coverage of the Obama White House chronicled a particularly volatile economy. In the first month of his presidency, 700,000 jobs were lost, followed by the housing collapse in 2007-2008.
The audience for economic news is fairly broad, Horsley has found, noting that everyone is interested in paying their bills and having a job and a home.
“In public media, we saw the enormous success of Marketplace. It has shown a real appetite for economic and business news on the radio. Not only will listeners tune in for it, but advertisers will pay for it,” he said.
Over the years, he’s produced spots on everything from the shipping industry to longshoreman unions to energy crises. He’s reported on infant formula shortages and, more recently, a shortage of medical IVs, causing medical procedures to be delayed nationwide.
In 2022, NPR began to ramp up its coverage of inflation and the factors driving it.
“Inflation spiked because of the economic rebound from the pandemic when demand surged and supply couldn’t keep up,” he explained. “That was compounded by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which affected global commodity markets.” Over the next few years, Horsley took to the air to explain the actions leading to slowing inflation, including Federal Reserve countermeasures and a healing of the supply chain.
“By 2024, much of the story became about the politics surrounding inflation. We did a lot of stories during that time around the disconnect between the positive news on inflation and the sentiment that persisted because prices weren't coming down. They'd stabilized but at a much higher level than pre-pandemic,” Horsley said.
“Of course, that became a political liability for the incumbents and governments on both the left and right worldwide, who were getting thrown out. That's not uncommon. It happens whenever there’s a spike in inflation,” he said.
Horsley follows several indicators to determine the economy’s health: jobs, wages, inflation, GDP, interest rates and other data. Sometimes, historical comparison can help wrap context around the numbers. Horsley offered interest rates as an example. While it’s true that rates have increased in recent years, compared to when previous generations bought a home, they’re comparatively low.
There are evergreen stories in economics coverage. Whenever Congressional debates about the debt ceiling unfold, Horsley produces an explainer for the audience. Otherwise, reporting on the economy is a dynamic beat.
“What I’ve always enjoyed about being a reporter, in general, and it’s certainly true of being an economics reporter, is that it’s an opportunity to learn something new every day,” Horsley said.
Delivering insight for informed decision-making
Nick Timiraos — chief economics correspondent for The Wall Street Journal — has worked for the Journal for 18 years, since he landed an internship for the News Corp flagship fresh out of college. He’d studied government and American studies at Georgetown.
“Then I started covering the housing finance industry right after the 2008 collapse," he said. After covering that beat for five years in New York City, he moved to Washington, D.C., to report on the economy more broadly, including covering the Federal Reserve. In 2021, he published a book on the pandemic-era economy, titled “Trillion Dollar Triage.”
“My job is unique because I'm fairly focused on monetary policy. I'm interested in thinking about the macroeconomy, in terms of what that might mean for interest rate policy and vice versa,” Timiraos explained. “I have several colleagues who cover the big and macro indicators, so I'm fairly involved in that coverage. And then I spend time with the editors trying to figure out what we think the economy is doing right now, what the big stories will be, and how we will tackle them.”
Timiraos distinguished economic analysis from predictions. “What I’m trying to do is just give the reader a better understanding of what might happen and why, rather than predicting what will happen,” he said.
Often, anecdotes signal what’s happening in the economy before the data affirms it. Timiraos said he began hearing from CEOs and CFOs on earnings calls that inflation was a concern in 2021.
“There were editors here who got very focused on the inflation story. This was when the Fed and a lot of private-sector forecasters were saying it would be transitory,” Timiraos recalled. “And you had a lot of people on the front lines, setting prices and wages, who were creating a different view.”
Timiraos said one of his daily challenges is finding the balance for storytelling so that everyone in the audience can learn something — from the most econ-savvy investors to readers who may not always follow economic news. "I really don't like to write off any audience," he said.
Inflation may warrant continued attention in 2025. “The policy changes that Donald Trump and his advisers are discussing have the potential to sort of restoke inflationary pressures,” he said.
And that brings up the question of politics versus policy. The economy has long been seen through a political lens, but Timiraos said political polarization feels worse than ever.
“For me, it just puts a premium on making sure you’re being fair and relying on really sound analysis to justify the story or that you’re providing different points of view,” Timiraos said. “I define success in my job as providing people with valuable, useful information to help them order their decisions — their business decisions — based on their understanding of the economy,” Timiraos said.
Making sense of the data
Ben Casselman is an “unapologetic econ nerd,” according to his New York Times bio. He’s reported on various aspects of the economy for more than 20 years — real estate, oil and gas. He covered the Great Recession for The Wall Street Journal and later reported for FiveThirtyEight. In 2017, he joined The New York Times newsroom and teaches economics reporting at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York.
“Early in my career, I became the guy in the newsroom who people would come to with math questions — usually calculating percentage changes, not advanced calculus,” he recalled. That inspired him to become proficient in Excel and to learn to code.
Casselman explained that working with data allows economic reporters to “stress test” theories.
“I work with economists all the time when we really want to dig into something, but it’s great to be able to do some of that initial work on my own to see if there’s something there,” he said.
Data visualization has become an essential part of the job. “My colleagues here on the graphics team often add annotations to help guide people through the interpretation of a chart, especially if it’s a slightly less familiar form of a chart,” he said.
Comparison and context are also helpful tools. For example, Casselman spoke about the cost of specific federal programs — how a $5 million program may seem a huge expenditure until you wrap it in the context of the total U.S. budget.
Casselman gave some examples of some of the related economic topics his reporting touches on — GDP and unemployment, international relations or the global economy, climate change and crime.
“At the beginning of the COVID pandemic, we had job losses and businesses shutting down, and then all the debates over the economic policy response. We were at the center of that conversation,” he said.
Casselman echoed his peers in this story: that the greatest challenge is engaging readers.
“If you write these stories as just a dense string of numbers, then you're going to lose people quickly,” he said. “But I don't think that’s any different than any other beat. You try to make the stakes clear, to bring real people into the stories — all the things that any reporter does in their work.”
Political polarization compounds the challenge, he said.
“I think we’re all dealing with that on some level these days,” he said. “The economy is a strange beast. This enormous thing has all these political implications, and they can feel very distant. At the same time, it is extremely up close and personal. You go to work every day. You earn a wage, and you worry about getting laid off. You look at the prices at the grocery store and compare them to your paycheck. People have these very visceral feelings about what they’re seeing and experiencing. Then they have this political valence. … It is a real challenge of the beat.”
Despite Americans’ thoughts on the economy that don’t square with the data, Casselman said he doesn’t find stories that dismiss their concerns helpful.
“I think when the public is mad about something, there’s usually some basis for that,” he said.
“I’ve been thinking about this a lot, to the extent that people are misinformed about the economy or other subjects we write about. We should be doing some soul-searching and try to understand what we could have done to inform them better,” he said.
Measuring the impact of economic reporting may not be as overt as, say, investigations, but it surely has an impact.
“I deeply believe for all this to work — for democracy to work — we need an informed citizenry. The economy is certainly an example of something incredibly important and difficult to understand if you're not thinking about it daily. I think my role is to give our readers some real understanding of the basic facts,” Casselman said.
“If I'm going to keep doing this work, I must believe this. I have to think that doing it and getting it out into the world in a way that people can choose to read and want to read will have an impact,” he concluded.
Gretchen A. Peck is a contributing editor to Editor & Publisher. She's reported for E&P since 2010 and welcomes comments at gretchenapeck@gmail.com.
Comments
No comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here