I agree. Planet Money is a great example of what financial news should be. And it is a completely replicable phenomena. Its strength largely comes from a few

I agree. Planet Money is a great example of what financial news should be. And it is a completely replicable phenomena. Its strength largely comes from a few personalities who are engaging, intelligent and intellectually curious and asking them to report on a subject they know little about. It gives a really strong mix of high end analysis and laymen explanations for the financial and economic mechanisms at work. Whats interesting about this style of reporting is that it seems to actually produce more in depth and nuanced analysis than what you typically see in, say, the wall street journal. I suspect this is because the laymen explanations lea to side analysis of issue that would otherwise be washed over. Where most financial news sources would report on the current state of toxic assets and how they are effecting broader markets, planet money in this series has spent an entire year reporting on what a toxic asset actually is, how it progresses through a market, its role in the market crash and what is being done to correct it. And all of this in about 3 minutes once a week.