Laurence Meyer Story
Assignment:
It's 3:30 p.m., just minutes after President Clinton nominated
St. Louis economist Laurence Meyer to the Federal Reserve Board.
Someone else will write the story about the economic significance
of the nominations, which include the re-appointment of Alan Greenspan
as chairman and the nomination of Alice Rivlin as vice-chairman.
Your assignment is to find out as much as you can about Larry Meyer and
to explain why he has been nominated. What is he known for in the world
of economics? What are his strengths? What papers has he delivered recently?
What is his background? Is he on the board of any major companies?
Some of this information will be packaged as a chart and the artist is
looking for examples of Meyer's most recent predictions and the results.
Just as you're getting underway your editor tells you the morgue has lost
the most recent picture of Meyer, leaving only a photo from the early 1980s.
Can you help?
Approach:
You've already checked the clip file and the wires. Now it's time to turn to the vast
resources of the Internet.
- Start with a search engine like Alta Vista, which is good with proper name searches.
You know he uses a middle initial so try both ways. Entering "Laurence H. Meyer" "Laurence Meyer"
[without conjunctions since Alta Vista defaults to AND OR] seems to strike paydirt -- 40 hits including
several from the Laurence H. Meyer & Associates, Ltd. Web site. Be careful -- while
most of the sites seem to pertain the right Laurence Meyer, the second one on the list is Laurence Meyer Md. Ph.D,
a medical researcher.
- Before you jump to the LHMA home page -- where you probably will spend a fair amount of time -- you may want
to continue scanning the results for other possible leads.
- By using Netscape's Find button, you can quickly scan through articles for relevant material. In less than a minute, you can tell
that a Federal Reserve article about business economists contains only a brief mention of Meyer's firm.
But a similar scan of the next hit -- a paper delivered by a fellow of the Heritage Foundation -- brings up useful information that probably will
make it into your article.
"Economists at The Heritage Foundation conducted an interim econometric analysis of the
congressional balanced budget plan using the economic model developed by Laurence H. Meyer &
Associates, a nationally recognized economic consulting firm. The Meyer model is used by many
major public agencies and private firms, such as the President's Council of Economic Advisers, the
Office of Management and Budget, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, and the
Congressional Budget Office.
A footnote is equally helpful:
"Laurence H. Meyer & Associates long has earned top honors for forecasting accuracy
when compared against similar firms. In 1993, it won the "Blue Chip" forecasting award for
the years 1989-1992. LHM&A was ineligible for the award in 1994, but again was rated the
most accurate forecasting firm in the United States."
- Some other finds: An article for Kiplinger Online includes comments from Meyer about the economic prospoects for 1996;
an article in USA Today quotes Meyer on the Congressionmal Budget Office and the OMB -- this could be important since Rivlin is
a fellow nominee; a review of Meyer's web site by fellow Wash. U. Professor William A. Barnett
that includes some comments about Meyer's business savvy.
- You probably should try at least one more search engine since results can vary wildly at times.
Excite would be a good choice since it, too, allows proper name searches.
- Meyer's home page is chock-full of the kind of information you need -- and it comes from the source.
In fact, the site already features a press release about the nomination. It also has a complete curriculum vitae,
a forecasting track record (the very information you wanted for a chart), a company overview, and an overview
of his macro model. It also has a color JPG photo that can be downloaded to disk and passed along the photo department. Even if the quality
isn't good enough to print it could be used for the Web version of your story.
- If you're trying to track down phone numbers of sources in academia, the Internet is an especially good place to start since many colleges and unversities have online
directories. Try the College Phone Directories page for an index of phone directories.
http://www.ccrc.wustl.edu/spj/surf/meyer.html
Last update 29 February 1996
Prepared by Lorrie Faith Cranor (lorracks@cs.wustl.edu) and
Staci D. Kramer (sdk@cris.com)