How NPR’s Geewax made the Piketty book more understandable

National Public Radio has had a couple of radio stories about how Thomas Piketty’s book has been getting a lot of attention, but the stories did not deeply dig into what he was actually saying. So senior business editor Marilyn Geewax wanted to use the web as a tool to help connect with its audience on the substance of what Piketty is saying.

But she wanted to be fair, and present some of the push-back. So she created a “fantasy” debate between Piketty and capitalist Edward Conard. You can read it here:

Even though it appeared on a Sunday, it attracted a huge audience thanks to social media. More than 10,000 people (so far) have taken the poll at the end of the story.

Talking Biz News invited Geewax to explain how the idea came about. Here is what she said in reply:

Earlier this spring, I had been hearing a lot about the Thomas Piketty book, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” but just hadn’t had time to read it.

So finally, I was on vacation the first week of May, and decided to plow through it (now THAT is a business-news nerd!). As I was reading, I was struck by how similar it was to a much slimmer book, Edward Conard’s “Unintended Consequences,” which had been released in the summer of 2012 – basically to support Mitt Romney.

Of course the two authors had reached different conclusions about public-policy going forward, but they seemed to agree that the post-World War II economic era had been a fluke.

They both believe the rich will get richer in the 21st century, but Conard was saying that’s a good thing because the trend would create more of the deep pools of private capital needed to take risks on innovation. Piketty says the rich will turn into the hereditary elite over time, and try to block innovation to protect the status quo.

I thought: jeez, I’d love to hear these guys debate each other.

So when I returned from my vacation, I thought, ya know, they already have debated each other in their books. But not too many people will have the time to read two books to piece it together. So why don’t I just save everyone else the trouble, and find the key arguments? So I went back through the books to find the relevant passages, and then boiled it all down to an imaginary debate. And we ended the story with a poll to let people vote on who won.

It was immensely popular. As of this moment, nearly 11,000 people have voted on line, and some 40,000 have read the story. And I have run up lots of “shares” and retweets, so it still has “legs” on the web.

In fact, Conard himself tweeted my story today and wrote: “Thx for distilling the crux of the debate!”

I just wanted to pass along this saga because I know I’m always looking for ideas for how to make dry policy issues more engaging. I thought this approached ended up being both a fair – and popular – way to present some complicated ideas.