The New York Times Reader: Business & Economics. Mark W. Tatge. Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2010. 282 pp.
Business and economics journalism, despite advances in the past two decades, still remains a backwater in terms of education in journalism and mass communication programs. That’s why Mark Tatge’s reader on business and economics coverage in the New York Times is a welcome addition.
Tatge, a former Forbes senior editor and Wall Street Journal reporter, uses examples from the Times to explain how stories about major business and economics topics were reported, and adds interviews with the reporters and editors who produced the stories so readers understand the difficulties, and the tricks, in covering such beats. That makes this a book that could be a valuable addition to the syllabus for corporate PR classes as well as reporting and business journalism classes.
Business journalism is undergoing a tremendous upheaval, as are all media. Many daily newspapers have cut their stand-alone business sections and buried that news inside other sections. Weekly business newspapers and websites in metro markets have stepped up to fill that void, while national and international media organizations such as Bloomberg, Reuters, and the Wall Street Journal have expanded their staffs to cover more business and economic news.
Meanwhile, there’s a major discussion going on about business journalism and whether the coverage did its job leading up to what has been called the current Great Recession. Some argue that the business media were too soft on Wall Street and didn’t do enough to warn consumers that the economy was heading for trouble, while others point out that it’s not the job of business reporters to tell people when and how to invest, or whether to sell their home before the price drops.
Tatge straddles the line between these two camps. He’s more interested in improving the quality of journalism students coming out of universities in their ability to cover business and economics news, and reaches no conclusions about the current quality.
This Reader is part of a series from CQ Press that examines a variety of reporting areas, from arts and culture to sports. Tatge, a former business journalist himself who oversees the business journalism program at Ohio University, is an excellent choice to put together the business and economics entry.
There are many different ways to teach business journalism, and Tatge falls in the category of using examples with his students and explaining how the topic is covered by one of the pre-eminent media outlets for business and economics journalism. The New York Times won more awards—fourteen—than any other paper in the 2009 Best in Business Contest by the Society of American Business Editors and Writers.
The bulk of this book’s text is the articles from the Times. Where Tatge adds value is that he takes some of the articles and breaks them down by highlighting certain parts and explaining to the reader what the writer is trying to accomplish with the sentence or paragraph.
For example, a story on a recent jobs report about the economy shows how Times reporters David Leonhardt and Catherine Rampell break down the concept into terms that the reader can understand and explain what is missing. Tatge also points out when they use an example and what that does for the reader, and how they reinforce earlier points later in the story.
Perhaps the most valuable portion of the book, however, is when Tatge interviews the journalists at the end of each chapter, asking them how they got into business journalism and about strategies for reporting and writing stories on their beats. We find out that Leonhardt, for example, was a math major in college and sometimes has difficulty talking to economists, and how economics reporter Louis Uchitelle comes up with his story ideas.
Also valuable is a section at the end of each chapter called “Making Connections” that helps budding journalists understand the significance of writing about business and economics issues and how they can develop similar stories. The downside is that there’s not enough of these features throughout the book. Although Tatge previews each story in the book with a short introduction, one wishes for more examples broken down in the detail that Tatge offers with a handful. In addition, the interviews with the journalists leave me wanting more of those, too. Like Oliver Twist, I’d also like more, please, of the “Making Connections” features, which are neatly formatted in text bubbles on a page at the end of each chapter.
And, like any book attempting to cover a wide swath of journalism, there are some business news topics that aren’t covered in this reader. If you’re looking for a textbook that tells students how to cover merger and acquisition stories or the Federal Reserve, then you’ll need to look elsewhere.
Still, this is a strong book that will make a contribution to improving business journalism, and help the burgeoning business journalism education movement in academia.
CHRIS ROUSH
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill