Media & Information, Recession & Depression

O.K. So the experts now say we started this Recession a year ago.  I wrote about the art of the economy Thanksgiving week a year ago, noting Patrick Thomas' recession illustration for the NYTimes story, The U.S. Economy: Trying to Guess What Happens Next.  Yet everyone seemed to dance around the subject until we hit The Global Financial Crisis this fall and now Depression is the skirted word, dancing out there with just a toe in the water here and there in the media.  I'm watching the art and names of this crisis.  The way the story is covered  and the economic fallout is changing the mediascape and is a black swan itself (Newspaper ad revenue fell almost $2 billion in the third quarter for a record 18.1% decline, according to new statistics from the Newspaper Association of America and auto advertising is altering tv).  Nicholas Taleb, author of the The Black Swan thinks our present economy is more serious than The Great Depression.

According to the Economist's View, The Need for Reliable Information, about what is driving the financial crisis (lack of liquidity or from fears about lack of adequate capital and solvency), the writer touches on something important: "I'm starting to think a third component is important as well, the complete breakdown of traditional information flows, and a loss of confidence in the models used to evaluate that information. Markets need information to work properly, and the information financial markets need is not available."  That is one reason why economic blogs are gaining readers and why Bloomberg News has grown into a financial powerhouse with more than 135 news bureaus around the world. 

Vanity Fair has a great deep piece on Bloomberg without Bloomberg and while other news outlets are struggling and newspapers are dying, credible timely news - online - is gaining readership.  Regardless, many are debating the death or survival of tangible media. Regardless, telling the Recession/Depression/Global Financial story is a challenging one for media (read Why CNN Struggles to Cover The Economic Panic for just one example).

This story will change media and it is told best by experts, not the 24/7 generalists on tv.  Longer articles give depth - like in the article in the New Yorker on the history of the crisis focusing on Bernanke and how the color of his socks got the attention of the President while attention to the reality of the situation was off-mark, or Columbia Journalism's Great Man Theory, on how Henry Paulson, who earned a degree in English, became the subject for magazine covers.

Releated stories:
Flickr:Part I: Sept. U.S. Economic Crisis Media Study ---Flickr:Part II: Oct. US Economic Crisis

Blogging on the subject starts with
Bigge$st Cri$i$ and Media--
Media Grabs the Big Story: Global Financial Crisis
The Art and Names of the Global Financial Crisis
How Now Brown (Economy)
Panic, Collapse & Meltdown overtake Crisis as Descriptive Word
Contemporary & Old Media: A Perfect Storm Part I
Contemporary & Old Media: A Perfect Storm Part II

Comments

[Kay Dennison]

Ohhhhhhhhh my God! An English major as head of our treasury? As much as I respect a liberal arts education, I do understand that sometimes background in a pertinent coursework is essential. My own English and Spanish majors don't really prepare me for much of anything except teaching. By Paulson's example, however, I'm ready to take over a local bank. Right.

[tut-tut]

I don't think a person's undergraduate degree marks him or her as qualified for only certain jobs. Paulson, for better or worse, has a Harvard MBA and a Dartmouth BA.

[anthony]

Ok, you were correct with the info you gave, like most Ivy's, he received a liberals arts degree (as an undergrad). You should probably add that he later received his MBA at Harvard, then worked for over 32 years , eventually attaining the CEO position at Goldman Sachs, a multi billion dollar company. His background is actually the only impressive thing about him. We will know about his performance in another 12 months.

[H.A. Page]

anthony and tut-tut make good points about the full education of Paulson which I didn't expand on in my article and by omission disregard an important set of qualifications.

Thanks for the quality of feedback.