Washington , D.C., 2014—The economic weather map, which started out as a gimmick, changed everything. It showed us how the old stuff—good stories told by professional reporters—could live happily alongside all the new: user-generated content, data mash-ups, discussion forums, Twitter feeds, and all that.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Back on September 6, 2008, NPR launched Planet Money, a team of radio and multimedia journalists producing a podcast, blog, Web site, and ongoing radio stories. Planet Money’s mission was to make clear a torrent of economic and business news. Our theory was that many Americans were eager to understand how economics and business affected their lives, but found much business reporting too jargon-filled and confusing. It was coincidental that we launched on the day that the U.S. and world economies, effectively, broke down. The first few months were wild. By mid-2009 we could, occasionally, catch our breath, and that’s when we put together the economic weather map.

The map was supposed to be somewhat simple: a fullcolor, fun-to-look-at, easy-to-use replica of the world which could show, in rich USA Today colors, just how the economy was doing. Areas with lots of job loss would be in red, the high-growth areas (there weren’t many in those first years) would be in blue.

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