Get an inside look at the week NPR fellows spend in Los Angeles, learning how to better cover economic issues for local and national programs.
Covering the economy coast-to-coast
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Author Archives: Laura Hertzfeld
(Very) young homeowners
How did Denise Tejada buy a home in the San Francisco Bay Area before she was even old enough to drink? Youth Radio has the story:
Financial field trips
Ever see millions of dollars get shredded into the trash? When does a dollar bill not, well, fit the bill anymore? Yesterday, EconomyStory took a field trip to the Federal Reserve branch in downtown LA with a group of NPR reporters here for the week from across the country to learn from experts about expanding their coverage of the economy.
The training program (more on that here) is taking reporters from places as remote as Rapid City, South Dakota and as bustling as New York City to hear from professors, researchers, and other journalists about concepts and issues like the mortgage crisis, securities regulation, and financial literacy.
At the Federal Reserve, one of 12 branch offices of the country’s central bank around the country, we learned how cash is transported and stored for banks around the country, what circumstances take a bill out of circulation, and even saw a real-live $10,000 bill. Most of our trip was off the record, so no pictures from the vault…sorry!)
Currency does seem to be the name of the game this week. Fittingly for our location in LA, Nightly Business Report tells us the True Hollywood Story of the dollar.
And NPR’s Planet Money blog shows us how one artist is taking coinage matters into his own hands.
A bitter taste
The announcement this morning that Conde Nast is shuttering Gourmet Magazine (and three other titles), is just the latest in a string of struggles facing the publishing industry. I recently wrote about the challenges African-American media outlets are confronting, along with other niche publishing areas and the industry as a whole.
Food is one of the easiest ways to understand economizing at home, and Gourmet Editor-in-Chief Ruth Reichl shared her recession favorites on the Leo Lopate show on WNYC earlier this year.
In an older interview on Charlie Rose, Reichl talks about the importance of food in our lives.
But rather than wallow in the past, maybe the best thing to do is have a (classic 1940s Gourmet-approved) cocktail.
From Detroit to Rochester to Jackson
What’s “Ruin Porn”? Who’s making a federal case out of apples? And with dismal job numbers released today, what’s it like for a renegade job hunter? The economic portrait being painted around the country is bleaker than it has been in a while, but stories from around the country make things look a little brighter.
Ruin Porn is the name being given to photographs from depressed Detroit of burned out buildings and deserted downtown areas. Stemming from a recent Time Magazine piece on Detroit, WNYC’s On the Media attests that photographers are becoming obsessed with getting these grim photos, making this look worse than they are.
A look at Michigan Public Radio’s Economy Project site gives a more overarching view of the ailing Motor City, including stories on balancing the state’s budget and progress on infrastructure projects from stimulus money.
Apple farmers in New York are facing pressure from the federal government over hiring undocumented workers for migrant work. NPR fellow Rachel Ward reports from WXXI in Rochester on farmers who say there just aren’t enough legal laborers to get the picking job done during apple season.
And at Mississippi Public Broadcasting, a new show called Job Hunter follows a young woman looking for an escape from the 9 to 5.