Tracking prices for supermarket basic products over time is a service to readers and a way to keep an eye on the national economy
By Laura Hazard Owen*
A bag of 1.3 pound of Wyman frozen wild blueberries. Half a kilo of salmon. A dozen large brown eggs.
Every month, students from the University of Southern Maine check the prices of these items, and more, in 4 supermarkets in the state: Whole Foods in Portland, Shaw’s in Bangor, Walmart in Farmington and Hannaford in Caribou.
All this for the sake, an initiative that Maine’s public radio launched in partnership with the University of Southern Maine earlier this year. The index, which monitors heating, gas and rental prices, as well as food, aims to help Maine’s public radio public to understand inflation in the state (and perhaps also find the lowest egg prices).
Voters in the 2024 elections in the US as the most important issues they faced, and Donald Trump (Republican Party). After the election, I wrote about how – and how prices in the supermarket represent a unique opportunity for news organizations to connect with people who may not read them otherwise.
Since Trump assumed the presidency, food prices, and for Trump can cause.
Communication vehicles, large and small, national and local, are trying to help readers understand the consequences. Some, such as, are monitoring food prices at the national level, based on data from. Others, such as AEA, are also informing readers which stores look to find the best deals in milk and bread, broccoli and bacon.
And some vehicles are deepening, providing more comprehensive and frequent reports and signing partnerships with market research companies to obtain data or collecting them themselves. Here are 3 interesting initiatives I have observed in recent weeks.
The Boston Globe
O Boston Globe such as toilet paper, eggs and ground coffee in the Boston region since last August. It also has a useful feature that allows you to see how different food categories in different cities change each week and how much they have changed in total since 2019.
“We were repeatedly writing about the price increase and we wanted to standardize the way we collected and shared information.”said, data editor of the Globe.
O Globe Get your supermarket data from the Market Research Company, which collects price information weekly. The US Work Statistics Department, on the other hand, discloses food price data monthly. DataSembly categories are also more specific than those of BLS and offer “Access to information about specific products”said, developer of the newsroom of the Globe.
The monitoring of the data over time also allowed the team of the Globe He was aware of particularly interesting changes or trends in the prices of certain products, which inspires unique stories like this about Boston egg prices.
Maine Public
On December 5, 2024, the Maine Public published a request on its social media channels:
O Maine Public received more than 400 answers in just a few days. (Some were: “How about a 500 ml normal coffee cup in Dunkin [Donuts]; a Hannafords King Arthur white flour bag; And a packet of soap powder tide pods, original aroma, 57 Wal Mart units? ”) Organized in a spreadsheet, “We could see that people were more concerned with grocery, housing, public services and some health costs” items ”said, presenter and producer of “Maine Public’s Morning Edition”. “Of these, we were more interested in those who were more volatile and [portanto] They would probably serve as an early indicator of where prices could be going ” –Mercearia, gas and fuel for heating and housing, especially rent.
O Maine Public It had the help of, Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Southern Maine, and his students to track food prices and interpret the data. The result is the.
O Maine Public It receives gross data from Cauvel students at the end of each month and connects them to the dissemination of the labor statistics office a few weeks later. Publishes articles related to the months of E (“Egg prices stopped rising Maine, but other items such as meat, milk and broccoli helped raise the index by 1.3%”), and you can wait for the next article in mid -May.
The Washington Post
O Post since Trump’s inauguration. Instead of presenting the variations in the prices of individual items, the newspaper adds to groups – as meals of fast foodbarbecue, breakfast and blts.
“Throughout the campaign, we noticed how Trump chose specific examples of the types of things people were paying more: bacon, lettuce, tomatoes,” said, columnist for Post. “As he emphasized price increases so often and gave examples of these increases, it seemed natural to keep an eye on how these prices could change during their presidency.”
“We include eggs, avocados and Greek yogurt not only in honor of millennial culture, but with a way to measure the potential effects of tariffs or aviary flu.”
O Post Get your data from the Market Research Company, which prefers data from the US Labor Statistics Office for some reasons. First, Namator data is disclosed daily rather than monthly, allowing for more frequent updates. Second, allows the tracking of “Baskets” Predetermined items: This week, for example, you can see that the price of a breakfast with eggs, avocado toast, Greek yogurt, coffee and orange juice has risen 4% since Trump’s possession and 53% since January 2020.
There is another reason not to trust Bureau of Labor Statistics, the team said. At the beginning of the project in January, they were concerned about the reliability and consistency of federal data; Trump often. In February, the Doge (Department of US Government Efficiency) of Elon Musk, the BLS, raising concerns that US government data could become.
The reaction of readers of Post It has been generally positive. “A reader commented that this tracker showed exactly why he voted for Trump before”said, graphic reporter of the opinion section of the Post, “And the continuous pain – called by inflation – which he still feels”.
*Laura Hazard Owen is editor of Nieman Lab.
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