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With increasing frequency, network reporting aims toward a necessarily simplified but often illuminating explanation of events. ABC's Cordtz, a former writer for FORTUNE and the Wall Street Journal who is recognized even by rival network executives as the best on the beat, specializes in giving viewers a primer on how things work. In one stock market story, for example, he included a step-by-step description of how a share of stock is bought and sold; in a report on the downturn in retail sales, he ticked off the roles of Government, business, foreign buyers and consumers in reviving the economy. His colleagues at ABC include Connor, a former Wall Street Journal reporter, and Stephen Aug, a former Washington Star business editor who delivers morning news briefs at express-train speed. Admits Aug: "There is a lot you do not have time to say, and sometimes the best you can hope for is to leave the viewer with an impression of what you have said."
CBS has Jane Bryant Quinn, who also writes for Newsweek, Ken Prewitt, a reporter for MONEY, and Evening News Correspondent Ray Brady, an alumnus of the business-oriented Forbes and Dun's Business Month who nonetheless tends to stress the impact of economic trends on the ordinary viewer. "He is much more consumer oriented than anyone else on the beat," says a senior CBS News executive. Contends Brady: "You can boil most economic phenomena down to whether you do or don't make money."
In addition to Commentator Alan Abelson, who is editor of the business publication Barron's Weekly, NBC has Reporters Jensen, a New York Times alumnus, and Irving R. Levine, a longtime correspondent in Moscow and Rome who pioneered the beat starting in 1971. Levine is sometimes regarded by critics as behind the times, perhaps because he rarely uses flashy graphics. He urges an administrative change, already undertaken at rival ABC, that would, he says, greatly improve coverage: designation of a pool of specialized producers (ABC has five) to work on economics. Says Levine: "Not having to initiate a new person into basic understanding each time would increase my productivity enormously."
Print reporters who cover economics, and Government officials with fiscal duties, continue to see the networks' coverage as underprepared and thin. Says one reporter: "Their biggest problem is that network correspondents cannot say, 'I do not know what this development means.' They should learn that they do not have to take the conventional interpretation as fact." A related complaint is that TV reporters tend to overemphasize the significance of a single statistic, like one month's index of leading economic indicators, or an unrepresentative situation, like the unemployment rate in Youngstown, Ohio. Perhaps in part out of professional rivalry, print reporters also claim that their TV colleagues rarely break new ground. Says a Wall Street Journal writer: "I do not feel that watching the nightly news is a necessary part of my day."
Even the critics, however, concede that there has been undeniable improvement over the past couple of years. The new availability of computer-generated graphics has allowed reporters to illustrate, and therefore air, stories unsuited to ornamentation with stock footage. In addition, there has been a salutary rediscovery of the chart.