How Insider's Emma Cosgrove reports on the chaotic, never-ending supply-chain crisis
- Insider is taking you behind the scenes of our best stories with our series The Inside Story.
- This week we're spotlighting Insider senior reporter Emma Cosgrove, who covers transportation and logistics, including hot topics like warehouse technology and same-day delivery.
Tell me a bit about your background and how you began covering transportation and logistics.
I've slowly crawled up the supply chain for most of my career in journalism. Around seven years ago, I was covering food and restaurants in NYC, but I'd worked in the grocery industry before that, so I asked a lot of questions about farms, sourcing, packaging, and distribution.
Luckily, at that time food and agriculture coverage were starting to merge (still in process), and in 2016 I was offered a job covering venture investing in food and agriculture technology based on the work I'd done as a freelancer.
I was fascinated by how much the system we use to get food to stores and restaurants affects the food we grow, what we find on shelves, and what's affordable. Tiny tweaks to such a massive system can actually improve our food, and most of the time that has nothing to do with famous chefs or tech billionaires.
That led me to reporting on supply chains for Supply Chain Dive before joining Insider. There I got a crash course in trucking, ocean freight, warehouse operations, and last-mile delivery. When I joined Insider in February 2021, I knew I wanted to focus on delivery because that's the part of the supply chain that the e-commerce explosion of the last two years is changing the most. And it's the part we can all relate to.
What does a day in the life of reporter Emma Cosgrove look like?
I always start my day with news. Logistics is obviously global and there are plenty of stories to read out of China and Europe when I wake up in New York. A lot of my work is planned out ahead of time since it's fairly deep reporting for Insider subscribers, but sometimes I get a tip that's worth dropping everything for and those days are secretly my favorite.
The most important thing I do every day is keep up with folks doing the work in logistics, from startup founders, consultants, and investors to package-delivery drivers and gig workers. Especially during the holiday delivery season, I want to know what everyone is seeing all over the US and, increasingly, the world. Sometimes it's a long, winding conversation, but a lot of the time it's just a text to a package-delivery driver asking 'How many stops today?'
How does your international experience in Lebanon inform your career as a journalist?
My first job out of college was covering the Lebanese banking system for an English-language magazine in Beirut called Executive magazine — which still does great work despite the dire financial situation in Lebanon right now.
I had no idea it would be such a good introduction to business journalism. Lebanon is a small country with a manageable list of financial power players to learn. Jumping into financial reporting in a foreign banking system meant I couldn't really use any existing knowledge (which at 21 was pretty slim anyway). That led me to ask a lot of really basic questions — which is something no reporter, however experienced, should skip.
That job also taught me to pay close attention to context in business stories. Lebanon has such a rich, complicated, sometimes heartbreaking history. I cringe now to think how many rooms I walked into and executives I interviewed without fully understanding how that history informed everything that happened in business and elsewhere.
I definitely learned that lesson the hard way and try to keep it in mind now. Some of the companies I report on are old — UPS has been around for 114 years — so when I talk to logistics execs who've been around a while, I try to make sure I know my history so I can properly understand the context around decisions.
How do you go about finding inside scoops on major corporations like Amazon?
I report on a fairly complex and unsung industry, so I start with a genuine interest in the ins and outs of logistics — especially e-commerce. Everyone talks about how fast Amazon delivers, but fewer actually know how it's done and what it requires of the people that keep up those speeds every day.
A lot of my best sources first reach out to me in response to my reporting because they can see I try really hard to get the logistics part right.
I report on logistics because I know how important it is to all of us and how much it shapes our world. Hopefully that resonates, whether sources are reaching out to me or I'm reaching out to them. From there, it's about developing relationships and trust — and asking the right questions.
How has your beat changed during the pandemic, and how do you see a transportation beat evolving as time goes on?
Here's a thought experiment: Everyone reading this is a consumer. Think about how the way you get all of your stuff (food, sweatpants, gym equipment) has changed in the last two years. That's how much my beat has changed.
E-commerce logistics networks have pretty much been maxed out since the summer of 2020, and it's caused a massive amount of invention and investment. The industry really hasn't been able to catch its breath, so I'm excited to see which investments were the smart ones if and when things slow down.
What most excites you about your job?
I like understanding how the world works. If the last few months of the "supply-chain crisis" has taught us anything, I hope it's that this system of making stuff and moving it around the world is a very messy miracle. There's no central organizer.
I think once you learn to see the "stuff" moving all around the world, you look at everything differently and it's hard to go back. That probably sounds dramatic, but the highway is more exciting when the trucks mean something to you. I can look at a truck or a railcar or watch the cargo being loaded onto an airplane from my seat and at least infer something about what's going on. I can spot things that are out of the ordinary and ask sources what's up.
What's more, I have a lot of concerns about consumption and climate change. Covering this beat is a great way to keep an eye on that — even if it certainly doesn't make me feel better!