The Press: Sylvia & You

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She was there not only at the right time and place, but in the right way. Then, and even now, the business sections of the daily press offered only meager nourishment for the millions of newly curious. They abounded in the dullest kind of copy: earnings reports, production indexes, commodity prices and stock charts, most of it in the strange and mystifying currency of the marketplace: "economic parity," "discretionary income." "price-earnings ratio," "net free reserves."

Against this backdrop of "bafflegab," as Sylvia calls anything the reader cannot be expected to digest without help, her column stood out in bold and refreshing relief. For years she had been explaining the meaning of economics in terms that anyone could understand. Since no one else was doing it, Sylvia had the field to herself. As James A. Wechsler, editor of her base paper, the New York Post, has said: "Sylvia walked into a vacuum."

Aimed at Everybody. Sylvia asks the reader to come equipped with nothing more than an interest in a basic commodity: money. She supplies the rest, in a pattern so skillfully simple, informal and clear that it slides readily even into the nonexpert mind. "Increasing productivity" turns into "a bigger output per man per hour." "Discount rate" becomes "borrowing rate." Rather than indulge in bafflegab, Sylvia takes a paragraph to explain the jargon.

The Porter reader is invitingly and inevitably addressed as "you." This means everybody: "Just consider these facts and you'll grasp the deep personal meaning of this to you—whoever you are, wherever you are." If the "you" is fissionable, Sylvia splits it: "you, the small business man" and "you, the consumer," to quote two salutations joined in one recent Porter column. "You" also is highly possessive: it is "your recession," "your cost of living," "your pocketbook," and, of course, "your dollar."

Brightening the Dull. Through the densest economic thicket Sylvia blazes a simple trail. "You wouldn't by any chance have $460 tucked away in your pocketbook or wallet or lying around the house this minute, would you?" she once asked in her column. "As a typical American family, that's the astounding total you're now supposed to be holding in CASH. The statistics are indisputable, unassailable." After this arresting lead, guaranteed to nail the typical American reader, she led a quick tour of a difficult subject: a report on the national currency hoard.