March 11, 2005

The US trade deficit makes the front page

Posted by John Quiggin

In my first-ever blog post (apart from a Hello World! announcement), I commented on the fact that, whereas trade and current account deficits were big news in Australia, US papers buried them in the back pages. At least in the online edition of the New York Times, this is no longer the case. The latest US Trade deficit ($58.3 billion in January) is front-page news.

Despite this catch-up, it’s still true that anyone wanting coverage of economic issues in the US would do far better to read blogs than to follow either the NY Times or the WSJ, and no other mainstream media even come close. It isn’t even true, as it is in other cases, that bloggers need the established media to get the facts on which they can then comment. The NY Times story linked above is basically a rewrite of the Bureau of Economic Analysis press release which you can get by automatic email if you want.

The competition is much tougher in Australia. Media coverage of economic issues is better, the number of economist-bloggers is smaller and quite a few of us play both sides of the street anyway.

Posted on March 11, 2005 08:59 PM UTC
Comments
Followups
Post a comment










Remember personal info?






Please only hit the "Post" button once. Although there may be a delay while the page reloads, something is happening, we promise.