Read the two, real-life biographic profiles below. One is for economics professor and textbook author, David Romer, and the other is for New York Times journalist, Jessica Silver-Greenberg. Reflect on their similarities and differences to answer the questions that follow.
Textbook Author
David Romer
David Romer is the Royer Professor in Political Economy at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has been on the faculty since 1988. He is also co-director of the program in Monetary Economics at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He received his A.B. from Princeton University and his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has been a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 2006.At Berkeley, he is a three-time recipient of the Graduate Economic Association’s distinguished teaching and advising awards; he received Berkeley’s Social Sciences Distinguished Teaching Award in 2013 2014. Much of his research focuses on monetary and fiscal policy; this work considers both the effects of policy on the economy and the determinants of policy. His other research interests include the foundations of price stickiness, empirical evidence on economic growth, and asset-price volatility. His most recent work is concerned with financial crises. He is married to Christina Romer, with whom he frequently collaborates. They have three children, Katherine, Paul, and Matthew.
New York Times Journalist
Jessica Silver-Greenberg
I write about what happens when big business collides with all kinds of people — residents of nursing homes, patients, credit card customers, workers and consumers. Recently, I’ve focused on the intersection of money and health care. I’m always interested in pursuing stories that hold the powerful to account, expose corporate malfeasance, and illuminate the ways companies exploit the legal system.
I’ve been covering business for more than a decade, and I’ve been at The Times since 2012. Before that, I covered debt buyers and debt collectors at The Wall Street Journal. I got my start in journalism as an editorial assistant at Businessweek Magazine, where I arrived in the midst of the 2007 financial crisis. I’m a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist for my work on forced arbitration and the debt-buying industry, and I’m proud that my work has helped to expose illegal debt collection practices, predatory lending, pregnancy discrimination and unnecessary medical procedures. I was born in New York City and I grew up in Los Angeles. I got a degree in English literature from Princeton University. Now, I live in New York with my husband and two kids.
As a Times journalist, I share the values and adhere to the standards of integrity outlined in The Times’s Ethical Journalism handbook. No matter what the subject matter, I strive to be accurate, empathetic and fair in my coverage. I never retreat from a tough story, and I fight to protect the anonymity of my sources. I try to keep an open mind and not jump to conclusions. I operate under a no-surprises policy to give subjects of a story the opportunity to comment and share their perspective. And consistent with The Times’s ethics policy, I don’t have a financial stake in any companies I cover. I don’t own individual stocks, and I don’t accept money or gifts from any companies or people who might figure into my reporting.
