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Stories purely about businesses, other than news items on layoffs or bankruptcies, are still infrequent. But one worthy exception was a series last week by CBS on "deindustrialization," or the disappearance of jobs in heavy manufacturing. Reporters Ed Rabel, Bernard Goldberg and Linda Douglass tellingly depicted the rise in productivity and entrepreneurial spirit among Third World competitors of Western manufacturers. The series disputed, moreover, the optimistic observation of a similar report by ABC's Richard Threlkeld a few weeks ago. Describing the retraining of jobless former auto workers in California, Threlkeld said: "These labor pains we are feeling are the economy giving birth to the 21st century."
Threlkeld, Rabel, Goldberg and Douglass, interestingly, are not regularly assigned to economics stories. But increasingly the networks are scheduling more coverage of commerce and finance than even the expanded specialty staffs can handle. Sums up NBC's Frank: "Economics is creeping into everything. All of our reporters need to acquire economic literacy."
—By William A. Henry III.
Reported by Janice C. Simpson/New York