The Economist's man in Los Angeles

If he didn’t work at The Economist, Andreas Kluth "would still be precisely the type of cosmopolitan his magazine would want as a reader," Andrés Martinez writes for Zócalo Public Square. "Born in New York, he grew up in Germany, studied at Williams and the London School of Economics, and met his Taiwanese-American wife while working in Hong Kong. At home in Santa Monica, he and his wife speak to their three young children in English, German, and Mandarin. God knows how they’ll get by without Spanish."

So what makes a great Economist story? “Ideally something interesting, quirky, contrarian, and revelatory about a place’s core truths,” Kluth says. “PR people have given up trying to pitch me,” he says, laughing, “which is a good thing.”