Explaining economic indicators to business readers

The Newark Star-Ledger newspaper began a month-long look this week at the economic indicators that are expected to move the markets each day.

The series will work out to about 17 installments, ending May 1 with the personal income report. It will appear on the bottom of the section front each day, unless there’s nothing interesting on the economic calendar that day.

“We started with an overview on Sunday and launched today with the admittedly unsexy ISM index,” says staff writer Mary Yanni, who is overseeing the project. “The first really sexy indicator will be Friday’s employment report, but we didn’t want to wait until then to get this thing going.

“The genesis of the series was our feeling that any publication that can bring a sense of calm, perspective and clear-headedness to the story of the economy during this rocky time will be doing a great public service to its readers,” she added. “This is only one piece of what we’re doing.”

The economic indicators series is an offshoot of the “Business 101” column Yanni has written, off and on, for more than six years. She’s writing, designing and doing the graphics for each installment. The pages are designed by Allyson Murphy.
 
The series is showing up on the business section’s breaking news blog (nj.com/business), after the actual report comes out, so the paper can get the actual results out there.

Here are some examples of what they have done:

If you want to see these graphics in more detail, right click your mouse on one of them. Then click on “properties.” Then copy the URL and paste it in an Web browser and hit return. A larger version should appear.