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Columbia Journalism Review content tagged unemployment

1. June 8, 2011 02:39 PM

   WaPo Shows Geithner Pushed Austerity

   A profile reports the Treasury secretary steered Obama away from jobs focus

   By Ryan Chittum

   You can sense a surge in criticism of the Obama administration coming, both from within and from former members of Obama's economic team—something not unexpected as the rats see the ship start to sink again. Here's a speech Christina Romer gave recently that's on the leading edge here: 'Like the Federal Reserve, the Administration and Congress should have done more...

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2. December 16, 2010 05:51 PM

   WSJ Parrots Governor Christie on Jobs

   But missing context undermines the governor's—and the paper's—story

   By Ryan Chittum

   The idea, I suppose, of The Wall Street Journal's Greater New York section was to bring a little Journal touch to the local news. Not so much with this piece. The paper types up an interview with New Jersey's Republican Governor Chris Christie, editorial-page favorite, and puts it under this headline: "Christie Crows About State Job Growth": Gov. Chris Christie...

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3. January 11, 2011 08:41 PM

   WSJ Spotlights Wage Declines of the Laid Off

   By Ryan Chittum

   The Wall Street Journal is excellent today with this front-page examination of what the recession is doing to wages of those who've gotten new jobs after being laid off. It's a reporting-rich piece that looks at the devastation—both short-term and long-term—faced by those who've lost jobs in this downturn. First we get a nice triple-anecdote lede: In California, former auto...

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4. April 1, 2011 02:16 PM

   A Times Snapshot of the Gilded Age Economy

   The very rich do very well while the rest of the country suffers

   By Ryan Chittum

   The New York Times's business coverage today is good and depressing—a portrait of our Second Gilded Age. On page one, we learn that the CEOs of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, once quasi-public but now nationalized companies, made $9 million and $8 million respectively over the last two years. Taxpayers have already bailed out Fannie and Freddie to the tune...

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5. April 27, 2011 11:24 AM

   Ask Bernanke About This, Too

   Depression-era levels of black unemployment in some cities, well-documented in HuffPo

   By Dean Starkman

   This morning's strong Huffington Post piece on black-unemployment is a useful clip to print out and carry to the first-ever press conference Ben Bernanke is hosting this afternoon. Everybody's got an opinion on what to ask: David Leonhardt wants to know about jobs overall. Me too. A Wall Street Journal reader asked this good one: If you are serious...

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6. December 10, 2010 07:01 PM

   Audit Notes: Herald-Tribune Investigation, Drumbeat, Nothing for the 99ers

   By Ryan Chittum

   Down in Florida, State Farm has exited its coastal hurricane-insurance business, saying it couldn't afford it anymore. But thanks to an investigation by Paige St. John and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune we now know that State Farm is still in the hurricane-insurance business in Florida and its machinations are making it lots of money (emphasis mine): A Herald-Tribune investigation finds Florida's...

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7. January 4, 2011 11:31 PM

   Audit Notes: Google v. Groupon, BofA Deal, The 99ers

   By Ryan Chittum

   The Wall Street Journal's Shira Ovide writes that Google, spurned by Groupon despite its stunning $6 billion offer for the startup, is talking like it's going to start a similar service to compete. In other words: Google's going to have to try to conquer the local-coupon market the old-fashioned way: Create a business from scratch. Oh, and use its powerful...

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8. June 21, 2012 06:50 AM

   Audit Notes: The U-6ers, Jamie’s corporate welfare, The Guardian’s future

   The NYT looks at those with not enough work

   By Ryan Chittum

   I like this Michael Cooper piece in The New York Times on the folks who don't show up in the headline unemployment numbers (which are bad enough as it is). These are basically U-6ers—workers who want full-time work but can't find it or who are qualified for much higher-level jobs but can't get them: Ms. Woods’s current job has not...

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9. March 2, 2012 01:14 AM

   Audit Notes: William Cohan, Three Little Pigs, Recovery Spring

   By Ryan Chittum

   In Bloomberg BusinessWeek, William D. Cohan writes about the spectacular downfall of hedge fund manager Dan Zwirn, whose $12 billion empire crumbled after he decided to buy a private jet and his CFO paid for it with improperly, and apparently, unbeknownst to Zwirn. This is fun (emphasis mine): Although the SEC has not accused Gruss of pocketing any D.B. Zwirn...

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10. November 19, 2010 11:37 AM

    Covering the Unemployment Benefits Extension Vote

    The reporting and play on a critical issue for millions needs to be a lot better

    By Ryan Chittum

    (UPDATE: Thanks for the comments, all. All I can say is I hope things turn around for you—soon. I've quoted some of your comments in a new post on how the first one showed how much appetite there is for this story.) House Republicans blocked a bill extending unemployment benefits yesterday. If it's not extended in eleven days, 800,000 people...

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11. September 15, 2011 12:39 AM

    Framing the Jobs Plan… Er, Second Stimulus

    This time Democrats get that language matters, and the press plays along

    By Ryan Chittum

    Barack Obama proposed his second stimulus last week, pitching a $450 billion measure. Or is it a jobs plan? Let's say it's both. Last go-round, the economic legislation was called the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which just goes to show that the Democrats really are clueless when it comes to political language. That somehow never entered the national consciousness...

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12. April 20, 2011 01:08 PM

    HuffPo Strong on North Carolina Benefits Expiring

    Arthur Delaney’s solid unemployment reporting

    By Joel Meares

    The Huffington Post’s Arthur Delaney has been doing some solid work following an important unemployment and budget story out of North Carolina that this weekend took a turn—and which has been somewhat drowned out in the national news cycle. It’s a story about the flipside of growth. On Saturday, Democratic governor Beth Perdue vetoed a bill pushed through the...

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13. October 8, 2012 06:50 AM

    Jack Welch and anti-business sentiment

    The former GE CEO, still a business press hero

    By Ryan Chittum

    Former GE CEO Jack Welch made waves last week claiming—with zero evidence—that the Obama administration manipulated the unemployment report that showed joblessness dropping to 7.8 percent last month. Now that's kooky. But it's not too surprising coming from Welch (whom I was writing this post about even before his conspiratorial tweet). Take for example the latest Fortune column by him...

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14. December 9, 2010 08:32 PM

    Jobless Benefits Extension Will Reduce Unemployment, Not Increase It

    Contra a WSJ columnist, the stimulative impact outweighs any negatives

    By Felix Salmon

    Last week, when I wrote my post on how to boost employment, the list started off unambiguously: The first—and this can’t be stressed enough—is simply extending the federal unemployment extensions. As Menzie Chinn notes, the CEA has scored this, and the numbers are enormous: already, the program has increased the level of employment by 793,000 jobs. If the extensions are...

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15. April 25, 2011 05:52 PM

    Ohio’s Lost Decade

    Dayton paper shines light on a devastating job and income losses.

    By Dean Starkman

    Look what's happened to payrolls in Montgomery County, Ohio, in the last decade: Annual private payrolls dropped about $3 billion — from $11.4 billion in 2000 when adjusted for inflation to $8.3 billion by 2010 — according to data from the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services. That 27 percent slide is the biggest percentage decline among Ohio’s...

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16. June 2, 2011 04:04 PM

    On Monetary Policy and Presidential Politics

    The next election may depend on the economy. So where are the efforts to fix it?

    By Greg Marx

    In today’s New York Times, Binyamin Appelbaum notes what is thus far one of the most salient facts of the 2012 campaign: WASHINGTON — No American president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt has won a second term in office when the unemployment rate on Election Day topped 7.2 percent. Seventeen months before the next election, it is increasingly clear that President...

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17. March 13, 2012 04:00 PM

    Stories I’d Like to See

    Afghan justice, Putin’s palace, and the Edwards trial

    By Steven Brill

    In his weekly “Stories I’d Like to See” column, journalist and entrepreneur Steven Brill spotlights topics that, in his opinion, have received insufficient media attention. This article was originally published on Reuters.com. 1. International, Afghan and American law surrounding the accused soldier-murderer: With the Afghan Parliament demanding yesterday that the American soldier accused of killing 16 civilians there be put...

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18. March 1, 2012 03:14 PM

    That Stuck Feeling

    The Huffington Post launches an ambitious new series on the poor and middle class

    By Ryan Chittum

    We all had a chuckle yesterday at the poor hedge fund marketing director whining about the difficulties of living in Brooklyn on $350,000 a year: “I feel stuck,” Schiff said. “The New York that I wanted to have is still just beyond my reach”… “I can’t imagine what I’m going to do,” Schiff said. “I’m crammed into 1,200 square feet....

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19. December 3, 2010 11:02 AM

    The NYT and the Urgency of the Unemployment Crisis

    By Felix Salmon

    The unemployment rate has long been called Obama's Katrina, but at this point it's clear that it's much worse than that: its political toll is surely worse for the president than a bungled hurricane response could ever be. Its human toll too, probably. And while it's never a good idea to read too much into a single datapoint, the fact...

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20. November 19, 2010 06:23 PM

    Unemployment Benefits as Search Engine Bait

    Readers want to know about this issue. Many of them need to know

    By Ryan Chittum

    When I think of SEO (search engine optimization), silly slide shows and headlines about Lindsey Lohan come to mind. But unemployment benefits? This morning I criticized the play The New York Times and Washington Post gave news that House Republicans blocked an extension of unemployment benefits and quibbled with The Wall Street Journal, which gave it decent play, for not...

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