“Marketplace” Reporter: Income Inequality Coverage Is Lacking
There is a wealth of important news going unreported just beneath the surface of the income inequality debate, a reporter for the public radio program “Marketplace” wrote in his newly award winning essay.
Mark Garrison, a radio reporter and substitute host for “Marketplace,” is the winner of the 2015 Women’s Economic Round Table Business Journalism Prize, Columbia Journalism School’s Knight-Bagehot Fellowship in Economics and Business Journalism announced today.
The $2,000 award goes to the winning essay on an economic or financial topic written by a current or past recipient of the Knight-Bagehot Fellowship. The essay is published by the American Institute for Economic Research. The Knight-Bagehot program allows mid-career journalists to have an all-expenses-paid year studying at Columbia University. They conclude their program with a two-day visit at AIER for lectures about economics and current AIER research.
This year’s contest called for ways business journalists can do a better job of covering income inequality. Garrison, a member of the Knight-Bagehot class of 2015, won with his essay that examines the under-reported impact of technological change on the income gap.
In his essay, “Covering Inequality: Lessons from a Clever Boy,” Garrison highlights how the gap between education and changing technology contributes to income inequality. He urges reporters to take a closer look at education and job training, and to ask hard questions of industry leaders about what they are doing to retrain people for the jobs of the future.
The essay can be seen here.
The Women’s Economic Round Table, or WERT, was co-founded and directed by Dr. Amelia Augustus. It has been educating men and women and informing policymakers about national and global economics, business and finance since 1976. The $2,000 award for this competition, known as The WERT Prize, is funded by earnings from a bequest made by WERT to the Knight-Bagehot Fellowship at Columbia University in 2005.
Garrison covers economics, marketing, employment, banking, the military, media and culture for “Marketplace,” a public radio daily magazine on business and economics news. He joined the program in 2012.
