ADRIAN MA, HOST:
When some reporters get assigned a financial story, their first instinct is to call up an academic or an economist. But not Stephan Bisaha.
STEPHAN BISAHA, BYLINE: If I'm doing a story about how people are dealing with their gas budget, it's like, well, I'm going to go to a Buc-ee's. There's always someone filling up, so I can wander from one to the other and just talk to as many people as possible to get a sense of how these things are actually affecting people.
MA: As NPR's personal finance reporter, he looks for people, not just numbers to report on.
BISAHA: Being respectful to people when they are sharing with you really tough situations that they're in - straight up just listening is the best way to be respectful, more than any platitude you could say or expression. It's really showing them that you are paying attention.
MA: And whether he's reporting on inflation, the rental market or unemployment, Stephan says he likes to put people front and center, although it's not always easy. Sometimes people are slow to open up about their finances, especially when they're struggling to make ends meet. For this week's Reporter's Notebook, I started by asking Stephan how he finds people to talk to about one of the most personal aspects of their lives, their money.
BISAHA: The beat I cover is personal finance. So, like, think where that actually means. It's personal. We want to talk to people. It's where the economy actually meets your wallet. Like, we have reporters that cover how you earn your money at work. We have reporters that cover how the overall economy is doing. We have reporters that cover where you shop.
But my job is, like, when you make that money, what do you actually do with it? How does it actually touch you personally? And, like, thinking outside the 9 to 5 and outside of just shopping - and to do that, you kind of actually have to talk to people. I mean, we could - we talk to all sorts of brilliant academics and experts all the time. But, I mean, people understand their own finances pretty well. If I'm..
MA: They are an expert on their financial situation.
BISAHA: (Laughter).
MA: Yeah.
BISAHA: Exactly. And, like, if I'm doing a story that's, like, kind of a big national story about the state of how people are, like - let's say spending their tax refunds, like, if I can't find someone who's getting a tax refund, it seems like it's kind of a big mistake on my part. Or, like, if there is some big story trend of how people are using their money, then it's like, well, it should not be hard to find those people.
I remember, like, doing a story not that long ago when flight tickets were really going up in cost and being like - and doing a story about, are travelers changing their flights or not booking as many flights? And I was scouring through Reddit trying to find someone - no luck. And I was like, wait a second. I'm about to hop on a flight. Why - if there's anyone with news about, like, what they're doing with their flights, it'd be people in the airport. So I just brought out the phone and interviewed people that way while I was at the airport and got some great interviews that way.
MA: When you report on affordability, what story have you done that surprised you the most in terms of what you heard from people?
BISAHA: Oh, I was doing this story not that long ago about a what's called build to rent, which is essentially houses being built not for someone to buy it and own it and have a mortgage, but built specifically so that they could rent that house out.
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JOANNE LAZETTE: Having my own private little house that I just rent.
BISAHA: The construction of these types of houses have grown a lot over the last five years. They make up 7% of new single family homes. LaZette pays...
These are houses built specifically just for people to rent them out. And I was kind of expecting a lot of, like, oh, I don't feel good about renting. It'd be nice if I could own this home. And - but then when I was talking to people who I would say, like, identified as renters as, like, part of the core of who they are. Like, yeah, I'm a renter. I've rented all my life. I like being able to move. I like the flexibility. And I think home ownership is still a big part of the American dream, but I think the American dream can also kind of be flattened out to one kind of checklist everyone follows. And for a lot of people, like, renting was part of their preferred lifestyle.
MA: Well, I'm curious, like, in covering personal finance, you meet a lot of people who are going through real financial hardship - like people with huge debts or bankruptcy, people who are just, like, scratching out a living. Can you talk about your approach to telling these peoples' stories?
BISAHA: I remember five years ago hearing about this concept called asset framing, and it's something I've really brought to a lot of my reporting, and this gentleman, Trabian Shorters, is the one that kind of came up with it. And it's the idea that, traditionally, the way you tell a poverty story is, like - the example I use is the story of Dora Whitfield, this mother in New Orleans who lost expanded unemployment benefits because Louisiana was ending them early. This was, like, a year or two, like, into the pandemic.
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DORA WHITFIELD: I never was behind on a bill.
BISAHA: But the game changed March 2020. Like a lot of workers, Whitfield was laid off.
WHITFIELD: Now I'm, like, panicking because now it's, like, what bill you pay this week and what bill you just have to call and get an extension on now because you're not used to receiving 200-or-some dollars a week now.
BISAHA: And she was in danger of potentially losing her house, and that's normally how most stories were taught. This person, danger of losing her house - the social safety net is being pulled back. And those stories can be tough to hear, but instead, like, the way we framed it - and the asset way of framing it - was Dora Whitfield has worked very hard all her life to be able to afford this house. She would work at Harrah's casinos and would - worked as a waitress and - at the buffet and served out those bottomless mimosas and had her regulars that would tip her sometimes, like, more than $100. And through her hard work, she built up and bought this house.
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WHITFIELD: And I'm proud of what I've accomplished because I stayed in public housing for, like, 30 years. So for the - to be able to get a key to go into something that belonged to you is like, ooh, you know?
BISAHA: And this house, she loved. I mean, she would talk about it with such a big smile you could hear it over the radio, how much she loved this house. But then, through no fault of her own, the pandemic happened, had to go on unemployment. The buffet was not coming back when unemployment benefits were - the expanded ones were ending. So she was still in a tough position, and she had to figure this out.
The idea of telling these stories first from, like, what are people's kind of, like, aspirations? What do they care about? And also just hearing someone smile - I mean, oftentimes, I think, like, it's easy as a reporter to go and talk to someone in a tough situation and want to be really, like, calm voice, serious face, and then try to be as, like - think that's the version of being respectful.
But people are more than just, like, the financial situation they're in. People were still - even when they're in tough points in their lives, they laugh. I think laughter is a really great way to connect with someone. So even while telling these tougher stories, like, and interviewing people, I'm still smiling. I'm laughing at their jokes with them. And, like, through hearing, like, the joy people still find, even in tough, like, situations and what's important to them - I think that's a much better way to make sure that people are paying attention and connecting while we still share the important, like, tough details about people's lives.
MA: It's an interesting balance between - like, focusing on a problem is, like, kind of the reason you're doing a story, but you also want - it sounds like you're trying to show the people are also more than their problems.
BISAHA: Yeah, exactly. So it reminds me of this phrase I had heard in grad school where it was like, we often talk about humanizing data. So, like, we'll get this report. Some national group will put it out - like, the number of bankruptcies being up in the U.S. And OK, it's important, and we want to cover it, and we might want to talk to people just to verify that that's true to people's experiences.
We'll talk about, like, humanizing the data - all right, we got this report, we're going to find a human that's attached to it - when really, it's like, no, the data came from people to begin with. Like, instead, the phrase, like, should be re-humanizing them. We are showing who the people are actually behind these reports, like, reintroducing the humanity that was behind this to begin with.
MA: So we've covered your approach to this beat to some of the important topics and the sources that you encounter. I want to end with, I guess, a slightly personal question, which is, in reporting on personal finance, how has that impacted the way you conduct your own financial life, if at all?
BISAHA: It's put a lot more, like, pressure on my financial decisions. Like, you don't want to be like the personal finance reporter whose own, like, finances are in a mess. So I think I've gotten a little bit better at tracking my own finance. But, you know, then maybe if there's one thing that's changed, it's a little bit - ironically, I focus less on the numbers and just - would these financial decisions make me happy?
MA: OK. Stephan Bisaha covers personal finance for NPR. Stephan, thanks for taking the time.
BISAHA: Thank you, Adrian.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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