NYTimes econ reporter Smith to write book on fallacies in American economics

Talmon Smith

New York Times economics reporter Talmon Smith has signed a book contract to write about the lies underpinning American economics and society.

The book is tentatively titled “Clout and Capital” and will be published by Altria, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.

Smith plans to take readers into Wall Street getaways and Washington backrooms, looking at local fights between government and business from Louisiana and Montana, exposing the fallacies behind concepts such as upward mobility being dependent on exceptionalism and what’s good for workers is bad for business.

Smith has been on the business desk of the Times since October 2021. He graduated from Tufts with a major in history and a minor in film. He began his career as a researcher and visiting scholar at N.Y.U.’s Journalism Institute and was assistant to the editor in chief at GQ Magazine.

He has written for The Atlantic, The New Republic, Vice News, The Village Voice and New York Magazine.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.