Journalism on economic and financial topics has become one of the major fields of the media. Economic news contains the first signs of the phenomena that occur in business, banking and commercial sectors, and the information that reporters provide to the audience should be as clear and understandable as possible. How to write simple and interesting articles on economic subjects, “reading” correctly the figures and statistical data? The SAJ students learned about this from the journalist Ion Chişlea, editor-in-chief of the Economica.md portal.

The course began with a theoretical insight into economic journalism. The trainer helped the students to understand different economic terms and explained how prices are formed in a free market economy, what mean exchange rate, demand and supply, trade balance, import and export, purchasing power, inflation, monopoly, competition, money laundering, remittances, offshore systems, etc. The practical part followed. The future journalists have learned what an economic news /article should contain, what are the criteria for selecting the subject for an economic reportage, or how we use figures and statistics in articles. The students also learned what a reporting on a financial subject means, how to find the angle of approach, and how to use properly the specialized terms. The acquired knowledge has been strengthened through practical exercises.

According to the trainer Ion Chişlea, the economic journalism course is important because this media segment remains less valorized and the lack of economic news leads to the misunderstanding of many phenomena that occur in society. “The information of an economic nature is more and more indispensable, being demanded by both the simple reader and the analysts, entrepreneurs and chiefs of big companies”, concluded the instructor.

The students say that the difficulty of practical exercises consisted in choosing topics and transmitting information in a way that was as accessible as possible to the uninformed citizen. “At this course, I learned that good economic news is based on figures that matter a lot, but the most complicated task is to convey the message so that every reader understands it”, said Maria-Victoria Racu.