This American Life broke the mold on business reporting a year ago when it aired an hour-long documentary on the normally snooze-inducing (at least back then) topic of the housing crisis. “The Giant Pool of Money,” a collaboration between TAL producer Alex Blumberg and NPR business reporter Adam Davidson, became a podcast hit long after the broadcast was over, as tens of thousands of people downloaded it to sort out why banks loaned money to people with little or no income and why that strategy was now dragging down the wider economy.
The duo’s plain-talking, we-don’t-really-get-this-any-better-than-you-do style of reporting became the foundation for a new NPR unit: Planet Money, a team of seven reporters and editors (including Blumberg and Davidson), whose mission is to help regular folks understand the economic gobbledygook being spewed out by government officials, financial bigwigs, and (some) mainstream reporters.
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Their accessible style isn’t their only novel take. The team is re-imagining how news should be delivered. Instead of limiting themselves to traditional radio broadcasts, Planet Money is experimenting with new ways of gathering and disseminating information. In addition to radio news segments, they do a thrice-weekly podcast (with over a million downloads every month); they post charts, graphs, and other extras to a blog; they contribute text-based stories to NPR.com; and they host a Facebook group and chat on Twitter, both of which have enabled them to build relationships with thousands of listeners — and sources — all around the world.
The approach is having results: The podcast is regularly in iTunes’ Top 10, Blumberg and Davidson recently walked away with a Polk Award, and “The Giant Pool of Money” won a Peabody. (And if that’s not enough, “The Giant Pool of Money” made such an impact that it even has its own Wikipedia page.)
mediabistro.com caught up with Planet Money editor Laura Conaway to learn how this scrappy team got people to start paying attention to business news again.
Was it a surprise when Planet Money started appearing in iTunes’ Top 10?
The whole thing was a surprise. We just so happened to go public the Monday that the government stepped into the whole Fannie and Freddie thing. It was kind of like tiger by the tail. We started off thinking that we would build slowly, there would be a blog, and we’d do some radio stories, and there’d be a Twitter feed, and we’d do a podcast once a week. But within a week or so of starting, we were doing a podcast every day.
Six months later, you’re still at the top. Why do you think that is?
Planet Money has a mission to explain the economy and to take one little part, to home in on one small accounting rule, or the difference between preferred stock and tangible common equity, and to swim around inside of that and make sure we understand it — and make sure the audience understands it. And if they don’t understand it, we’ll be back on the blog the next day, doing it again. That niche just so happens to be a very powerful place to live.
There are other things about Planet Money that really take into account some of the emerging things we know about new media and old media. You can build a really cool community that lives in a silent medium, like a blog or Twitter, and use a podcast as a place for people to gather. Everybody hears the same thing, and then they go yak about it in the more “silent” media. That is part of what makes it feel so great.
| “We put a lot of time into building relationships with the audience. If you want to document something like people being asked all over the country, and in different industries, to take furlough days and pay cuts, it really helps to know a couple hundred people all over the world.” |
There are people who would look at what you’re doing and say it’s interesting, it’s good, but it’s not “news,” because you aren’t doing the breaking, “what happened today” roundup, the way a more traditional newscast would. How do you respond?
It would be a mistake to say there is no news-breaking that goes on here. The Planet Money podcast was the first media outlet to report that the original bailout allowed the government to make capital injections in banks — to buy shares of banks. We reported it, and our higher-ups were like, “Are you sure?”, and we’re like, “Yup” — because [we were] saying something that no one else was saying, because we knew something that nobody else knew.
Another example — and this draws on our community — back when IBM was doing its big layoffs, and they were doing them very quietly, they laid off several thousand people and offered any number of them jobs in emerging markets. In other words, [they were saying:] “You can’t work in the United States anymore, but here’s your job in China or India.” We were one of the very first places to report that, because the people in our community were telling us about it. We had original source material on it. We saw the internal memos to people inside the company from the chairman of IBM, saying “The company’s doing great,” [and then,] oops, next day, “Here’s your layoff.” We had some people saying, “We’ve just been offered a job in India.” We were one of the very first places to report that.
The third thing, and it’s a little bit fuzzier, but it’s kind of interesting, is that we were one of the very first places to report on people being asked to take wage cuts and furloughs. I just posted an item asking, “Has anybody seen this?” And lots of people were seeing it.
| “[Twitter] can be the most powerful replacement for an RSS feed around. Log on, look at it, and in a few minutes, you see what you need to see about the world.” |
Is there anything about the way you approach the news that enables you to break that kind of stuff that a more traditional news organization might not?
We put a lot of time into building relationships with the audience. If you want to document something like people being asked all over the country, and in different industries, to take furlough days and pay cuts, it really helps to know a couple hundred people all over the world. That’s not our only shoe leather, but it’s certainly some of it.
In the mainstream media, Twitter and blogs routinely get dismissed [to wit: Maureen Dowd’s recent column on Twitter]. What do you think are some of the biggest misconceptions about those tools?
One of the biggest misconceptions about Twitter is that it’s a time suck. Twitter is an enormous time saver. Especially if you really pay attention to which people you follow and set it up so that you’re seeing a collection of people who tell you what they’re reading — it can be the most powerful replacement for an RSS feed around. Log on, look at it, and in a few minutes, you see what you need to see about the world.
One of the old misconceptions about blogs is that they don’t do any original reporting. And then, inside mainstream media, when you want to start a blog, one of the things you tell your boss is that it’s going to have original reporting. Blogs do need original reporting. But original reporting is not necessarily the be-all, end-all of a blog. It’s not necessarily what makes a blog a wonderful, living rumpus room to be in.
More interesting to me is the emerging relationship between Twitter and blogs, and what you do with each. It feels like it’s kind of shifted, even in the last couple of months. Increasingly, I’ll toss an interesting headline up on Twitter, for my Twitter crowd, and then save the blog for something like a chart, a little bit more complicated thing, or a letter.
Before you joined Planet Money, you were at “The Bryant Park Project,” another NPR unit testing the waters of new media. What did you learn there?
One thing we learned was [the value of] the “open kitchen” effect. You know how when you go in a restaurant, and you can see the chef whipping the chicken around? Bryant Park had that, as a motivating force — the idea that you [the audience] can live here. There’s not some “us” behind the curtain and you on the other side. It was really an open kitchen.
Adam Davidson has talked about how there’s a “culture of authority” among reporters — business and otherwise — and how they don’t admit their own ignorance, and how he thinks the fact that Planet Money reporters do is part of their secret sauce.
It’s kind of like The Wizard of Oz: Everybody just assumed that whoever was pulling the levers of media had to stay behind the curtain and look really enormous. The second you stop doing that, you can see that the audience was fine with that. I try to tell myself all the time: “Don’t pretend you know.” It’s only when I try to pretend I know that an interview gets out of control, and I actually come out of there with nothing.
Based on what you’ve learned, what advice would you give to traditional news organizations?
Every media entity, whether it’s a newspaper or a magazine or a show, every one of these things has its own personality. As a result, every one of these things is going to live in a slightly different way in social media. It’s important to be real. Just be human. Be who and what you are. And it’s only doing this that you’re going to figure out where you’re supposed to be.
What’s one of the most surprising pieces of feedback you’ve had about the show?
Someone said that we had become America’s new “fireside chat.” That’s heavy. It’s cool to hear. It’s wonderful to hear. It’s terrifying to hear. It’s a lot to live up to.
Are there any particular fun or interesting podcasts you’d recommend?
“Bad Bank” [another hour-long documentary that aired on This American Life, now available as a podcast, which explains the collapse of the banking system].
And a segment from Planet Money 15, called “Delicious Cake Futures.” [Total podcast length: 27 min.] It was this guy called Joshua Bearman talking about how he couldn’t get into the snack-trading economy at school, so he started getting people to trade with him based on this imaginary amazing, fabulous cake his Mom was going to make. It also became a radio piece. It’s sort of fabulous and fun and different from anything else.
E.B. Boyd is a San Francisco-based freelance journalist and editor of mediabistro.com’s BayNewser. She writes about the future of journalism at The Future of News and her Twitter handle is ebboyd_newsfut.
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