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CSMonitor editors share their favorite people to follow on Twitter

2. Business: Pew Research Center

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Pew Research Center on Twitter

  • By Steph Solis

For Business, the top Twitter spot goes to Pew Research Center’s main account, @pewresearch. The non-partisan American think tank provides data on issues, attitudes, and trends shaping the United States and the world.

The account tweets reports on several topics, from President Barack Obama’s approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to Catholics’ reactions to the selection of Pope Francis. Much of the data, however, also focuses on business-related issues.

“Pew offers in-depth data analysis on a wide variety of money issues and trends, like household wealth and student debt,” says Schuyler Velasco (@Schuyler_V), a writer and editor for the Monitor's Business section.

What's useful about the main account is that it retweets content from each Pew section, so you can receive information on several topics without it overloading your Twitter feed. Throughout the day, Pew will also tweet select updates from Pew’s Project of Excellence in Journalism, All Things Census, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, and the Pew Hispanic Center, to name a few.

NPR’s Planet Money was a close second top pick. The Planet Money section has a podcast that runs twice a week and a blog. Additionally, the section also produces radio stories for Morning Edition, All Thins Considered, and This American Life.

The articles on Planet Money delve into several areas of economics, but they're written in a way that’s understandable to most readers.

“Planet Money aims to make  economic matters accessible with explainers on topics ranging from why we care so much about the Dow to an argument that NBA superstar LeBron James is actually underpaid (seriously),” Ms. Velasco says.

Both accounts are constantly updated, though they likely won’t take over your Twitter feed, she adds.

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Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

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If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

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