Today, BNA publishes eight daily newsletters on such subjects as taxes, environmental regulations, and labor law. It also puts out a pile of weekly and bi-weekly reports, books, and CD-ROMs. On health care alone, BNA publishes eight titles, including Managed Care Reporter, Health Care Policy Report, and Medicare Report. BNA's scope is not limited to Washington. It has correspondents in 40 countries and all 50 states who report on regulation outside the Beltway. And its human resource publications include "best practices" reporting which may have little to do with government.
Still, the company's focus remains centered on Washington. "We try to provide a complete view of what is going on in Washington," says Toby McIntosh, who edits BNA's Daily Report for Executives, a summary publication that pulls material from BNA's vast arsenal of reports. DER costs $6,200 year and runs around 105 pages daily.
The day I interviewed McIntosh, The Washington Post featured a front-page story on OSHA's proposed ergonomics standards. "I was smiling when I read the paper this morning," says McIntosh, "because we ran a draft of that [rule] two weeks ago." This hardly matters to the average Post reader, who pays 25 cents a day and for whom the minutia of ergonomics is sleep-inducing. But for an association head or business lobbyist, two weeks' notice is worth the extra money. When the mainstream reporters call for comment, BNA's exclusive means that its readers have the facts nailed down and a well-crafted response. And BNA, of course, was covering ergonomics long before these draft rules. In 1998 the DER reported on ergonomics 80 times, while Monica got a mere 16 mentions.
Read BNA coverage of an issue side by side with the Post or theTimes, and it becomes clear that the outlets differ on level of detail and context.
While other publications return to an issue only when major movements occur, BNA covers even the tiniest baby steps. This has two implications: BNA has less need to put events in context, since it can assume readers understand the issue. And it shies away from drawing conclusions and making predictions, letting readers fill in the implications of the news themselves.
This latter distinction was displayed in late January when the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a complex ruling in a fight among the Federal Communications Commission, long distance carriers, and local phone companies, based on the 1996 Telecommunications Act. The New York Times led its story claiming the FCC lost, which "could delay efforts to open the $100 billion local telephone business to competition." The Washington Post's lead concluded the exact opposite, declaring that the decision "could hasten the pace of competition in one of the last bastions of monopoly in telecommunications, the $100-billion-a-year business of local phone service." BNA, perhaps anticipating its conflicted competition, reported, "The high court's ruling is cheered by both sides." Says a proud McIntosh: "We have less of a tendency to try to push a one-perspective lead. We are more willing to deal with the ambiguity of a story."
That's what BNA customers are buying. Says the manager of public policy for a major bank, who purchases a suite of BNA publications on the Web: "I think what the BNA depicts quite clearly is the complexity of the relationship between business and government and the extent of government involvement in markets. Corporate managers as a result need a resource like BNA to keep track of the multitude of touch points between business and government that change daily." He notes that "BNA [publications have] has broader and more detailed coverage than The Washington Post. They are accurate and unbiased."
BNA publications reproduce their sources' arguments without analysis or disputation, something Washington insiders like. As a result, these publications provide a neutral forum for the various players--executive branch bureaucrats, congressional staffers, industry representatives, think tank experts, etc.--to signal one another. "I am always excited to get quoted or cited in BNA's International Trade Reporter because I know our target audience, the most important policy makers, read it," says Brink Lindsey, the Cato Institute's director of trade policy studies.
"It's a way for people in Washington to communicate with each other," says Paul F. Albergo, managing editor of BNA's Health Care Policy and Health Care Daily. His audience, he says, echoing Lindsey's description, "are the most important people in Washington."
Uncle Sam's Biographer
Government regulation, like any system, is constantly evolving. It reacts to supply, demand, external shocks, and the institutional interplay of the separate branches and different levels of government. BNA publications evolve in rapid response. Albergo's Health Care Policy Report, for instance, was launched three months after Clinton took office, when health care emerged as a national issue. Labor Relations Reporter first appeared on Labor Day 1937, a few months after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Wagner Act. Environment Reporter was launched less than two weeks after the first Earth Day. Occupational Safety and Health Reporter debuted one week after the 1970 Occupational Safety and Health Act became effective.
A look at BNA's past publications gives one an idea of just what the government's been up to. The federal government's expansion is generally broken down into two periods. The first included economic regulations, which concentrated on regulating particular industries and labor relations to counteract a perceived abundance of "private power." Although some existed earlier, these economic regulations flourished in the New Deal, with such laws as the National Labor Relations Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act, and the Agricultural Adjustment Act.
The Great Society's social regulation marked the second push. Staring in the 1960s, the government sought to ensure general fairness and safety for each of its citizens, not just a balance of power between the working man and industry. Government would go to bat for minorities and women, under the 1964 Civil Rights Act. New regulatory agencies would also provide us all with a clean environment and ensure safe workplaces and consumer products.
As we approach the next century, journalist Jonathan Rauch argues we have entered yet another phase of regulation--that of "microgovernment." Empowered by statutes and expansive court rulings, microgovernment regulates through torts and personal rights litigation, in which individuals sue on their own behalf instead of being represented by unions or government agencies. Microgovernment expands without weighing social costs and benefits, because it is driven not by agency or group actions but by individuals with no particular interest in the broader ramifications of their actions.
The BNA library, which sits on the second floor of the company's seven-story building, documents these periods. BNA cut its teeth on the New Deal's second-wave labor legislation, which is reflected in the shelves of literature on labor law and relations. There's a 10-part series called Labor Relations and Social Problems, apparently designed for college courses, which covers details of labor law, a dense patchwork of legislation that first granted unions great powers of coercion and then later tried to rein them in.
Editor's Note: We invite comments and request that they be civil and on-topic. We do not moderate or assume any responsibility for comments, which are owned by the readers who post them. Comments do not represent the views of Reason.com or Reason Foundation. We reserve the right to delete any comment for any reason at any time.
nfl jerseys|11.15.10 @ 3:08AM|#
xbhdgthdg