Understanding and writing about public finance
Insights and tips from more than a decade of writing about government budgets and tax policy.
Happy Finance Friday, readers! I’m getting ready for the National Tax Association conference next week in which I’ll join a pretty impressive slate of folks in the public finance and journalism world. The topic is about how to make public finance research and policy accessible to the greater public. I have been doing a lot of thinking about the topic and it’s probably the question I get asked most: How do you write about public finance in a way that’s interesting and understandable?
This week, I’ll share some of the things I’ve learned over the years about understanding, writing about and – yes – getting downright passionate about fiscal policy.
Don’t worry, you’re not stupid
“I’m not following.”
“Can you say that again?”
“Let me say this back to you and tell me if I got it right.”
I almost never understand complicated stuff on the first pass. My sources are my greatest teachers and I have asked many of them to explain the same concept to me multiple times (in the same conversation) and they have patiently done so. One credit analyst even had me draw out a diagram during our phone call by way of explaining credit default swaps to me.
Read the story
When I think I have it, I go read more stuff (mostly news stories and policy briefs) about the topic and that either expands my understanding or exposes any remaining points of confusion. If it’s the latter, I go back to my very understanding sources.
Find experts whose writing you like
I have had the good fortune to meet many people who are not only experts in their subject, they are good at talking about it in understandable ways. These analysts also produce material (commentary, credit analyses, LinkedIn articles, books, etc.) that is clear, to-the-point and got me thinking.
Public policy professors (like my Public Money Podcast co-host Justin Marlowe) are natural teachers and wonderful sources who can help with more complex issues. The center-right and center-left think tanks are also great places to find good writing and sources who will explain their work.
Draw relatable parallels
Most people don’t have a pension. But lots more do have a home mortgage or credit card debt. When I’m learning about a concept in public finance, I try to liken it to something that most people actually know about or have experience with. It doesn’t need to be exact — the interest rate on mortgages and credit cards works differently than the rate used for valuing pension debt. But the end result is still the same: When you don’t make your payments regularly, the debt skyrockets.
The numbers may lead you to a story. But they’re not THE story
Talking about the impact or end result of a thing is more compelling than talking about the thing. Last year, for example, I wrote this story for Route Fifty about how Cook County made its property taxes WAY fairer in just one year. The concept is based in part on research conducted by the University of Chicago on property taxes and assessments and requires understanding how property tax assessments work. I found the data super interesting but the real hook here is the findings: That systemic bias leads to lower income homeowners shouldering more of the property tax burden.
Use numbers sparingly
Be super selective in choosing numbers to illustrate your point. The quickest test is to read out loud a sentence and see if you can actually get through it. It’s easy to get hung up on wanting to be precise but if the end result is confusion from number overload, you’re asking too much of your reader.
There’s even scientific proof that reading numbers is harder than reading words, via this 2023 study that employed eye-tracking data.
Most times, it’s OK to say “nearly half” instead of 45%, or more than three-quarters instead of 78%, or “most” instead of 89%. The same thing goes for years — many times, saying “more than a decade ago” instead of 13 years ago still gets the correct message across. I also like to use phrases like “eight in 10” when talking about things like survey data or voting.
Stay focused on the big number
Whatever fact or statistic attracted you to an issue is the star while everything else plays a supporting role. When writing about pensions, for example, I have found myself getting sidetracked with talking about investment patterns over time with all asset classes when my main point is that systems are increasingly investing in more volatile assets. It’s painful to delete those details. But it’s better to have a clear message.
Be ready to explain yourself
If I can’t talk about something clearly, I definitely can’t write about it. There were a few times earlier on in my career when I struggled to fully grasp a concept and took the easy way out by writing it out in the story exactly how it was explained to me. Without fail, my editor pinpoints that part in the draft and asks me what I’m trying to say. I of course failed miserably at doing so and had to go back and actually figure it out. Better to save time and feel confident about something before you start writing.
It’s really about people
Whether it’s affordable housing, homelessness, public parks, education, healthcare or infrastructure — doing good things in the areas that people care most about costs public tax dollars. As my friend and colleague Mark Funkhouser likes to say, if you don’t take care of the money, you can’t take care of the people. It’s why I feel passionately about connecting public finance to our everyday lives.
Some of my favorite pension stories are profiles of people like investor John Arnold, Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner and Alabama pension king David Bronner (a piece co-written by Dan Vock and for which we won an award). To illustrate the complexities of California’s housing crisis, I followed State Sen. Scott Weiner around for a day.
And when I visited Stockton, California, to write about that city’s bankruptcy, I asked people how it felt. “Nothing but horrible things they wrote about us — how screwed up we were, how awful Stockton was,” then councilmember Kathy Miller told me in 2014. “It was so demoralizing for the people in this community [to see Stockton] be held up as the poster child of the municipal screwup of the century.”
It’s been nearly a decade since that conversation, and it still sticks with me.
“Let me say this back to you and tell me if I got it right.”
Most productive line a reporter can utter, ever. I've run into so many journalists so worried about looking inexpert, they skate past complex or prolix topics, render them in superficial, zero-value terms, or, worse, mangle them in their telling. In my notebook-and-pen days I'd routinely say to subject matter experts, "I would rather look dumb in front of you, alone, right now than in front of thousands of viewers tonight, so... " and they'd laugh and set me on the right rail. A little humble listening goes a long way.