Economics and Journalism

 

An Educational Symposium for Journalists

Economics Symposium Faculty: Professor Price Fishback, Eller College of Management, University of Arizona, Professor Joseph Kalt, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, and Judith Gans, Program Manager, Immigration Policy, Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy, University of Arizona. Click here for more information on partners and faculty.

The news media continues to be a vital source of information, and many local citizens, policymakers, and other community leaders form their opinions and perspectives largely on the basis of local coverage of pressing issues. At the same time, however, journalists often have little background on the economics of the issues they are being called on to cover.

Lee Enterprises and the Arizona Daily Star with support from the Arizona Newspaper Association sponsored a Symposium on Economic for Journalists June 22, 2006, in Tucson. The Southwestern Symposium was organized by The Communications Institute as part of the Economics and Public Policy Project with the Thomas R. Brown Foundation. The Institute staff and trustees have experience in teaching economics, science, and other disciplines to more than 20,000 journalists throughout the nation.

TCI symposiums provide journalists and news management with an understanding of basic economic principles and their application to real world issues confronting the local community, the state and the nation. They also help journalists to understand issues such as energy, immigration, and economic growth in the global context. The goal of the program is help news organizations make their content even more compelling and interesting – and substantively on target.

The symposium is a high-level executive education program for professionals seeking to improve the foundations of knowledge from which they work. It is modeled after the education programs for top law, business, and public policy programs. Sessions are taught by experienced and nationally-recognized experts. In order to allow for interchange and discussion, sessions employ the Socratic method of questions and answers.