Category Archives: PRX: Public Radio Archive

Aggregated timely economy-related public radio content from local stations, independent producers, and news sources.

Parting thoughts

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Signs of the times

Signs of the times

Over the past 10 months, EconomyStory.org has featured some of the most poignant, informative and visual stories about communities coping in the ongoing crisis.

These stories are what make public media stand out – the voices featured from around the country and the innovative ideas that have inspired news stories.

It’s been so exciting to learn how the economy has changed over the past year – at times the stories have been hopeful and uplifting, often they’ve been upsetting and grim, but never boring.

Here’s a quick review of a few stories that continue to be relevant:

Book Club (4/12/2010) and Book Keeping (3/11/2010) Funny names of old financial texts, and a Paul Solman list of the best books on the financial crisis.

One Sixth of What? (9/22/2009) Back in September, before the health care reform legislation was passed, we examined what makes up the health care costs.

Trading Up (2/24/2010) looked at bartering’s comeback – from help with school projects to borrowing a rake from your next door neighbor.

Shifting Gears (4/2010): Tens of thousands of people work building vehicles in the U.S. And while Ford and GM are reporting that their books look better, many people are still riding the waves of the the hard transition in this industrial sector. That’s why Shifting Gears, a public radio special, will have relevance for some time to come. The latest EconomyBeat podcast features highlights from the program.

Pictures of Transition: One of the most popular aspects of the EconomyBeat.org blog this past year was the weekly collection of user-generated images about the state of the economy. These powerful, witty and painful pictures illustrate the compelling drama of the recession that communities and individuals continue to navigate.

I can’t write about EconomyStory without including stories that came directly from readers, listeners and viewers in the form of comments, six-word memoirs and responses on Facebook and Twitter.

A comment from reader Carlos Tobin about bank size, one of many active discussions on Facebook:

Limiting the size of banks could hurt a innovative start up bank that wants to form and take out the banks that caused the problem. Legislation will just entrench the existing players, and stifle innovation.

And the Six-Word Memoir Project with SMITH Magazine, which collected creative tales of economic hardship. The most recent ones, posted on the SMITH site include:

Whitney Cole: Goodbye, economy. Hello, credit card debt.
Charles: Exchanged credit cards for library card
Kali: Buying a camper, not a house!

EconomyStory will continue to serve as a jumping off point for exploring all that public media has to offer. Projects like Patchwork Nation and Youth Radio aren’t going away, so the links on this site will still take you to the best coverage of the economy. However, as the EconomyStory collaboration comes to an end, this blog will no longer be updated. You can still follow the great work that the Public Radio Exchange (PRX) does at PRX.org and you can follow my work on Twitter @laurahertzfeld. Thank you for all your support and input! And a big thank you to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) for making this possible.

Six words across America

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Jobs, health care, finances, credit, mortgages, recession. These are just six of the many topics EconomyStory has covered on the economic crisis. As our project is coming to an end soon, we’ve been asking for your six-word memoirs about how to cope in the current climate.

This week, Smith Magazine, the originators of the six-word memoir, is working with us to share even more of your stories.

Recently, we asked what happened to your career in the crisis and asked respondents to submit their stories in six words. Minnesota Public Radio got some great responses:

Mike Rose: Got work but wants more. Unlikely.
J. Wagner: On food stamps, Americorps, Future M.D. :-D
Jay: Career long in tooth, got yanked.
And a hopeful one from Steph: In three words: I found happiness.

A few more were posted on the EconomyStory Facebook page.

Lost two jobs gained an LLC

Take work when you’re offered it.

Adjust to reality, give up dreams.

In an earlier post, we asked about your experience with health care. MPR mapped the responses to show where listeners were live. They received stories from across throughout their listening area, all the way to the Canadian border.

Here’s one of my favorite health care responses:
Bill Kelso: Eyes popped out. Both of them.

What is your six-word memoir on the financial crisis? Share yours here and at Smith Magazine!

Cut it out

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Coupons/ Credit: Flickr user sgrace

Coupons/ Credit: Flickr user sgrace

It’s always taken a bit of persistence and planning to save money on the things you buy, whether it’s religiously cutting coupons from the newspaper or saving up frequent flier miles. Last year, NPR reported on avid e-coupon collector April Englebert, who told Weekend Edition that she saves up to 80% using online coupons. But over a year later, it’s now easier and easier to save money online – thanks to sites like Savings.com and GroupOn, as well as social networking sites like FourSquare and Yelp.

There are various models for online coupons. GroupOn provides limited-time deals that visitors sign up for using their local zip code for services like yoga studios, spas, and restaurants. Savings.com aggregates deals from national chains and online retailers. FourSquare and Yelp provide money-saving incentives for sharing information about places you’ve visited.

I spoke recently with Savings.com’s community manager Sara Dunham. She talked about the kinds of deals that people tend to search for online.

“I’m always surprised to see what people will buy,” she said. “Merchants are also trying to make it easier to buy online … Free shipping is one of the most searched terms for coupons.”

Dunham said that employees at Savings.com are even required to use the available coupons to book their work travel.

Beyond coupons, social network FourSquare hooks users up with deals at the businesses they frequent most. WLRN and Miami Herald’s Niala Boodhoo wrote about “FourSquare Day” last week:

There’s been lots written about Foursquare being dangerous for privacy reasons (it’s easy to stalk or rob you when you’re always saying where you are…
But Foursquare promotes it as a way to discover new places to eat, shop, etc. based on what your friends say they are doing.
Here’s where the Foursquare Day part comes in. Some businesses are getting in on the game by saying if you “check in” on Foursquare today at their establishment during a certain time, you can get a deal.

The privacy concerns about online coupons go beyond the information you may provide for the FourSquare and other social social network deals. The New York Times reported on the information stored in the barcodes of online coupons and when consumers may want to be wary.

Using coupons to link Internet behavior with in-store shopping lets retailers figure out which ad slogans or online product promotions work best, how long someone waits between searching and shopping, even what offers a shopper will respond to or ignore.

Have you used online coupons to save on goods or services? What kind of deals have you received?

Eating on a budget

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Meatloaf dinner

Meatloaf dinner

Just the idea of meatloaf conjures an image of TV dinners, Depression-era cookbooks, and eating for cheap. It’s not an inspiring image for a foodie, but I figured there must be a way to make a slightly more modern, healthier version of those dinners and still save money. So last night for my weekly Tuesday dinner club, I decided to make a gourmet version of meatloaf and green peas and add up the total cost.

Here’s what I made with the cost of ingredients:

Last year, The New York Times featured a piece called Fancy Meatloaf in the food section – the author was having Nora Ephron over for dinner—so I knew this was not going to be my mom’s meatloaf with the ketchup and the smiley face made of olives and gherkins. I’m a pretty amateur bread maker, but I wanted to do this whole meal as cheaply and as homemade as possible, so I threw together a loaf of whole wheat bread the night before and let it rise. And how can you have a meatloaf dinner without green peas on the side?

I had the basics already in the fridge (leftover bread, flour, milk, oil, butter, eggs, vinegar, salt and pepper), so adding to that I spent:

For the meatloaf:
1 pound ground chuck (I bought local, non-hormone treated beef): $7.77
1 pound ground veal: $5.64
1 link, hot pork sausage: $1.00
1 cup white wine: $10/bottle (and you can drink it with dinner!)

For the peas:
1 package green peas: $1.19
2 slabs house-cured bacon from the local deli: $2.50
1/2 pound mushrooms: $1.50

For the bread, in addition to the flour, I needed:
1 packet dry yeast: $.75
1 can beer $1.50

TOTAL: $31.85, for a meal that serves about six people. That averages out to just over $5 per serving, including a glass of wine. Not bad!

Going shoeless

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Toms Shoes

Toms Shoes

Sometimes the bad economic news seems so acute that we forget how good we have it. One company is trying to increase awareness of world poverty … by going barefoot.

A charity publicity stunt by do-gooder shoe company, Toms, is asking people to go shoeless for the day. The business model behind Toms shoes (you know the ones, the espadrille-like cloth slippers that come in all sorts of patterns and colors), is that when you buy a pair here, they send a pair to a needy child in the developing world. The idea behind One Day Without Shoes is to “experience a life without shoes first-hand.”

In a blog entry on the Huffington Post, Toms founder Blake Mycoskie wrote:

I think sometimes we forget what we have, and occasionally it’s important to remind ourselves. Most people don’t even realize how many children in developing countries grow up barefoot and all the risks, infections and diseases they endure.

On the other side of the spectrum, someone who is making money off of shoes is Tiger Woods. As humorist Brian Unger noted for NPR. A new ad for Nike rubbed Unger the wrong way after Woods’ recent scandals:

His austere Nike ad isn’t controversial; it’s kind of pathetic and dark: the ghostly voice of your departed dad, your ambiguous stare asking me for, what, forgiveness? Hey, I’m not your Moses. I need coffee.