David Brancaccio, host of American Public Media’s Marketplace Index, spoke about a version of “journalism that better serves more people” Monday in the Walter Cronkite School’s First Amendment Forum.
Brancaccio began the evening by stressing the importance of seeing how a story will affect the most people.
“Too many business news stories forget that most of us exist,” Brancaccio said.
He referenced a brief story he heard on the radio last week to illustrate his point.
“Walmart is saying goodbye to its signature greeters, at least during overnight hours, to save the company money,” he quoted. He noted the company’s and consumer’s points of view, but the story missed an employee viewpoint — which he called “the missing stakeholder.”
Brancaccio said the oversight is an area in which journalists need to improve.
“Business journalism still has work to do,” he said. “It’s easy to find the coverage of the needs of investors and consumers.”
He explained that most of the public isn’t just investors and consumers, but also employees.
Business and financial coverage is often narrowed down to an in-crowd, he said, adding that it is now important to focus on how a business story plays out among the wider public.
“The dislocated worker matters,” Brancaccio said, leading up to the preview of his soon to be released documentary, “Fixing the Future,” where he travels to American cities looking at economic experiments and their efficacy. The documentary was one way Brancaccio discussed the importance of journalists using the many resources available to them in order to tell stories.
“I’m a radio guy by birth. I’m also a still photographer. I’m a writer. I edit video,” Brancaccio said. “We are journalists (who) have to be telling our stories in as many ways as we can.”
He pointed out that with the technology available today, people choose what they want to consume when it comes to news, arguing that in a multimedia world journalists must be designers as well.
Journalism freshman David Ryan works in the New Media Innovation Lab and attended the lecture because he’s interested in technology journalism.
“I enjoyed the snippet of documentary, a really interesting way to dive into such a complex issue,” he said.
Speaking about his next project, Brancaccio discussed the importance of telling clear, accurate and compelling stories so people can be informed. He plans on traveling across the country without interacting with a human being, pointing out that he could rent a car, checkout at a store, listen to the radio and buy gas without human assistance, calling it “creative, memorable reporting.”
“I thought it was interesting when he talked about why radio is different,” said Justin McDuffie, a journalism freshman with a focus in business journalism.
Brancaccio said he believes the audio medium has great vitality.
“Public radio is doing quite well. There is no competition,” Brancaccio said. “You can do one other thing while doing it.” He offered driving and knitting as examples of things to do while listening to radio.
At the conclusion of the evening Brancaccio offered his advice to young journalists.
“If you are a good critical thinker and you can write and you have passion, then you can enter this area.”
Contact the reporter at alabril@asu.edu
