Kai Ryssdal wants you to enjoy business news

American Public Media’s “Marketplace” is one of the more popular shows on public radio. Its best known for a daily look at stocks. A rising market is reported with “We’re in the Money” playing in the background. If the market is down you hear “Stormy Weather.”

The show is also known for a magazine-style, in-depth but breezy presentation of business and financial news. Marketplace is the opposite of stodgy: hip, irreverent and whip-smart. The show also has a broad vision of which stories are relevant to business. It means you can hear a long interview with the founder of Starbucks but also a report on the economic impact of the crisis in Lebanon.

At the center of it all is Ryssdal, a veteran of the Navy and U.S. State Department who pushed his way into journalism as an intern at KQED and who now is one of the most recognizable and distinct voices in public radio.

Ryssdal presentation in Boise tonight is part of a plan that has him on the road once or twice a month. His speeches are short so the Q&A session can be long. “Really, events aren’t much fun if it’s just me talking for a little while,” he said. “I try to have a conversation, to see what’s on people’s minds.

Being stuck in the studio is “not where I’m at my best and not where the program is at its best.” Like most anchors or editors, he’s a former journalist who loathes sitting in a chair while good stories happen outside his door. And he wants to be more than a simple host who does a good job of reading story introductions. “It’s really helpful for me to just get out and walk around Main Street in Austin or Boise or Chicago and see what’s going on.”

He devours two or three newspapers (the print versions) each day, and turns up the sound in his television office each day when the market closes so he can watch Maria Bartiromo spend 90 seconds giving the day’s big stories from Wall Street. “Then I’ve got an hour to figure out what I’m going to say.”

Ryssdal and the Marketplace reporters are not compelled to report only the latest breaking business news. The show is not a version of what you read in the Wall Street Journal or on Jim Cramer’s web site. In fact, the 20 people who sit in on the show’s editorial meetings don’t really care about business – they care about interesting stories. “Nobody is going to read pieces or listen to pieces if you just tell the news,” Ryssdal said.

That’s one reason Marketplace is produced in Los Angeles. About two decades ago the show considered a setting up shop in Washington, D.C., or New York City.

“They made a very conscious effort to be outside that loop, to hear what the rest of us care about,” Ryssdal said. “When I sit down at noon or 12:30 to start writing the program I’m thinking about the person who’s got dinner on the stove or who’s reading the homework with their kids. They are trying to figure out not just a little bit of news but what it all meant. We are not speaking to the people who we know are listening – people in the White House, people in New York. They call us, but we’re not writing for them. We’re writing for people juggling 14 different things. I’m trying to make it make sense for myself.”

Marketplace is also engaged in more explanatory journalism because it doesn’t have the manpower or time to cover everything. The main show is on once for 30 minutes a day. (There is also an abbreviated morning report, which Ryssdal hosted for four years before moving up to the main show. He’s been in that position for about 18 months.) Marketplace has 15 reporters focused not on telling you what happened, but on why it happened.

“I love this niche,” he said. “It’s one of the best couple of jobs in broadcast journalism, bar none.” The very difficulty of taking what would otherwise be a dry business story and making it into something that makes a listener stop and think is something Ryssdal enjoys. “I think it’s satisfying because it’s hard,” he said.

Ryssdal, host of American Public Media's Marketplace and Marketplace Money, will be the featured speaker tonight for the Boise Young Professionals, in partnership with Boise State Radio.

American Public Media is the nation's second-biggest producer of public radio programs, reaching 14.7 million listeners nationwide each week. Marketplace offers "business news for the rest of us." Segments revolve around money and business, people, local economies and the world with the signature Marketplace sound and wit.

Tonight’s event will be held at the historic Crystal Ballroom located at 802 W. Bannock St., Boise in the Hoff Building (second floor) from 6:00 to 7:30 p.m. Registration is required, and the cost is $10 for BYP members and $20 for non-members. Click here for more information.