An idea for business sections

Normon Solomon suggests that business sections in 2006 should add a labor page since most of the coverage is devoted to CEOs and companies.

Here is the specific suggestion: “Daily newspaper editors: Just about every paper has a ‘Business’ section, where the focus is on CEOs, company managers, profit reports and big-time investors. But a lot more readers are working people — and a daily ‘Labor’ section would be a welcome addition to the newsprint mix.”

He also has a suggestion for the Wall Street Journal editorial page: “Take another look at “The Wealth of Nations,” in which your hero Adam Smith shared the kind of insights that you often scorn. ‘It was not by gold or by silver, but by labor, that all the wealth of the world was originally purchased,’ he wrote. And consider what Smith observed about manufacturers and merchants, the kind of special interests your editorials routinely tout as synonymous with the public interest – ‘men whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it.'”

The entire post can be read here. I like both of these suggestions, but not for ideological reasons. I’d like to see business journalism try new things to surprise their readers.