Journalists with the Financial Times, a London newspaper that covers global economics and politics, believe that Bethlehem can provide a window into the mood of Americans through Donald Trump\u2019s turbulent second term in office.<\/p>\n
Financial Times journalists will visit Pennsylvania\u2019s seventh largest city throughout the next three years \u2014 at least through the end of Trump\u2019s second term \u2014 as part of an in-depth reporting initiative called the \u201cBethlehem Project.\u201d<\/p>\n
Among the Financial Times\u2019 global audience, interest in U.S. politics is at an all-time high as Trump\u2019s attacks on Iran and threats to invade Greenland threaten to upend the international world order.<\/p>\n
Financial Times journalists are honing in on reporting in the Lehigh Valley because voters in the region hold a disproportionate amount of power in a swing congressional district in a swing state. How those voters feel about the economy, Trump\u2019s performance and other major developments can provide a crucial key into how future elections play out, the Financial Times believes.<\/p>\n
Northampton County is one of few \u201cbellwether\u201d counties in the United States \u2014 its voters have voted for the presidential winner in every election except for three in the last 115 years.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverybody in our readership is now fixated on America, and what\u2019s going on in America. I mean, that\u2019s true for the BBC, it\u2019s true for the times of London, of the New York Times, everybody\u2019s fixated on this one story in America,\u201d Derek Brower, U.S. news editor at the Financial Times, said in an interview with The Morning Call. \u201cPeople are fixated on this, and so they want to know about what\u2019s going on in America. But they also don\u2019t want \u2014 I strongly believe this \u2014 they don\u2019t want just to be told what Donald Trump has just put on Truth Social all the time. They want something to understand what is going on in the world\u2019s most important democracy and most important economy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Editors at the Financial Times began the project because they were looking to understand \u201cthe mood of the American people\u201d during Trump\u2019s consequential second term as president.<\/p>\n
Bethlehem fit several criteria editors were looking for when scoping an area in the United States to base its in-depth, interview-focused reporting: It\u2019s in a swing state, has a diverse population, and is part of a mid-sized region that is \u201cbig enough for us to have stories to write, but small enough for us to get a handle of,\u201d Brower said.<\/p>\n
The project already has produced several pieces on Bethlehem, including stories that explore the decline of the local manufacturing industry<\/a>, rising inflation putting a strain on local consumers<\/a>, and a high-profile ICE raid in Bethlehem that resulted in the arrest of 17 construction workers.<\/a><\/p>\n Brower has said the response from the Financial Times audience, which is a global, largely educated group, has exceeded his expectations.<\/p>\n \u201cThe number of views in the stories and the engagement with them is above the benchmark for equivalent stories in that area of the paper,\u201d Brower said.<\/p>\n The goal is for Financial Times journalists to feel like a part of the Lehigh Valley community, Brower said. Though the newspaper does not have an office in the area \u2014 the closest is in New York City \u2014 journalists spend at least several days at a time reporting on the ground in the area, looking to go beyond \u201cparachute\u201d journalism, a term for when journalists drop into an unfamiliar area for a breaking news story without plans for further follow up.<\/p>\n \u201cI am hopeful that the extensive and nuanced reporting the Financial Times is doing will allow people to understand the depth of the challenges that our country is facing, and that the only way for us to make progress is for us to come together in a way that rejects a lot of our individualistic impulses about how these problems can be solved,\u201d said Bethlehem Mayor J. William Reynolds, who told The Morning Call he has been interviewed at least four times already by Financial Times journalists as part of the project.<\/p>\n Plans for the project include an in-depth look at the impact of data centers on the region, and increasing its presence and reporting in the Bethlehem area during and leading up to the midterm elections in November.<\/p>\n The outcome of the project has only further confirmed Brower\u2019s hunch that Bethlehem can serve as a \u201cmacrocosm\u201d of the country with an abundance of stories relevant to the Financial Times\u2019 international audience.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat has been the outcome so far of the reporting we\u2019ve done, is that it confirms that this is frankly a great macrocosm of the country,\u201d Brower said. \u201cAnd there\u2019s just a wealth of stories. \u2026 As soon as you start diving into something, you start understanding and caring about where that story goes, you find new leads, and you find new angles, and \u2014 everything always becomes richer and richer, and that is the entire point of the project, is to just to follow our nose, be led by people, come listen to what they have to say, write it down, tell our readers about it.\u201d<\/p>\n Reporter Lindsay Weber can be reached at Liweber@mcall.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Journalists with the Financial Times, a London newspaper that covers global economics and politics, believe that Bethlehem can…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":131208,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,121,120,153,182,139,434,28,432],"class_list":["post-131207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-bethlehem","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-northampton-county","tag-pennsylvania","tag-top-stories-tmc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131207\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/131208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}