The Art of Casting: On Business Insider's Capitalism Series

I just read a Business Insider article, and I thought it was really sophisticated how they chose a typical person as the interviewee to actually achieve universality, while weaving in graphs throughout.

8 Americans explain how capitalism has shaped — and failed — their lives

Business Insider spoke to readers in their 20s to 80s about what capitalism means to them and why some of them are rethinking the system.

Business InsiderAgnes Applegate

It felt like they successfully found a representative persona for the largest segment in each graph. Right after an interviewee's story about spending her life "climbing up a hill", the piece places a graph showing that 33% of respondents answered "Very low" to the question "Which best describes your level of trust in major economic institutions?" while only 2% said "Very high."

This is the craft: typicality first, then specificity layered on top. Kirk Reynolds mentioning he has less than $100,000 in his 401(k) after 28 years of work isn't just a personal detail. It's a statistic with a face. Gabrielle Benson's line that "inequity is not a side effect of capitalism; it is a condition required for it to function" carries weight not because it's a novel argument, but because it comes from someone who has personally navigated both private boarding school and a working single mother at home.

From topic selection to editorial judgment, a piece worth learning from.