Backgrounder: Anya Schiffrin
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After reporting on business and economics around the world, print reporter Anya Schiffrin readily offers her economic and financial advice to journalists aspiring to cover stories on an international scale. But she hopes to equip them with the critical thinking skills it takes to report on a foreign country before they step foot on a plane.
In the 2004 book Covering Globalization: A Handbook for Reporters, co-editors Schiffrin and economist Amer Bisat address the new demands on economic and business reporters, who play a significant role in framing the issues of globalization for their readers.
"Reporters are now being asked not only to cover major events, such as the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank and the periodic meetings of the World Trade Organization, but also to interpret what happens at those meetings within the broader debate on globalization."
An adjunct professor at Columbia University, Schiffrin teaches Topics in International Business and Economic Reporting at the School of International and Public Affairs. She is also the director of journalism training programs at the Initiative for Policy Dialogue, a worldwide network of economists based at the university that is overseen by her husband, Joseph E. Stiglitz, a recipient of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics and a professor at Columbia University. She founded the Initiative's Web site, journalismtraining.net, which organizes workshops around the world.
Schiffrin has worked as editor-in-chief at The Turkish Times in Istanbul, as a stringer for Reuters in Barcelona, as senior financial writer at the Industry Standard in New York and as bureau chief for Dow Jones Newswires in Amsterdam and Hanoi. In addition, she has freelanced in Spain, Turkey, Pakistan and the United Kingdom.
On March 22, Schiffrin will speak at New York University's Department of Journalism.
"Reporters are now being asked not only to cover major events, such as the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank and the periodic meetings of the World Trade Organization, but also to interpret what happens at those meetings within the broader debate on globalization," according to the book, "Covering Globalization."
In her early 40s and with a decade of experience as a business journalist, Schiffrin hopes to educate reporters who are mostly "ill prepared to write about the complex economic issues facing their countries" and who "lack information about what has happened in other countries," according to the book.
"It is not enough to know about your local company anymore," the book warns. "You also need to know about global trends in the sector in which your local company operates. You cannot write about labor in Jakarta or Hanoi without knowing about the Nike boycotts in the United States and Europe."
Schiffrin gives reporters pointers on not only how to cover foreign countries, but also how to scrutinize the activities in their own countries. In an article in Columbia Journalism Review in 2002, Schiffrin proposed journalists could help prevent another Enron by closely examining companies' financial statements.
"It looks like Enron did withhold vast amounts of information, but even so a close study of its accounts could have tipped off analysts and reporters far earlier to the fact that something was wrong," she wrote, urging reporters to take a closer look at footnotes and cash flow figures in financial statements rather than revenue and profit figures from income statements.
While reporting in Cambodia, she suggested how certain trends may be good for business but bad for people. In a 1998 article for the Associated Press, she wrote about attractive "beer girls" in Phnom Penh who help increase beer sales at restaurants and bars by flirting and often sleeping with their customers.
While many business executives said the "beer girls" boosted profits for the restaurants and bars, Schiffrin pointed out that these girls were also exposing customers to potential health risks.
"Cambodia has one of the highest AIDS rates in Asia," she wrote. "The threat of AIDS may be greater for beer girls because they don’t consider themselves to be prostitutes and at risk. According to a 1997 survey by the Ministry of Health, only about 10 percent of beer girls said they always used condoms, compared to 42 percent of prostitutes."
Schiffrin wants reporters to become better informed on the events and policy debates at home and abroad not just for themselves, but for the sake of their readers.
Schiffrin graduated from Reed College in Oregon, and as a former Knight-Bagehot academic fellow in business journalism, she obtained a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University. Her father, Andre Schiffrin, is a founder of New Press, a New York book publisher, and the former managing director of Pantheon Books.