If this happens, it is a small but real victory, at a time when victories of any kind are few and far between, one for which you deserve some of the credit.
On Fri, Oct 18, 2013 at 2:58 PM, Robert Naiman <[email protected] > wrote: > She credits Nation of Change, Dean, and MoveOn. > > > http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/18/the-times-is-working-on-ways-to-make-numbers-based-stories-clearer-for-readers/ > > October 18, 2013, 2:46 pm > > The Times Is Working on Ways to Make Numbers-Based Stories Clearer for > Readers > By MARGARET SULLIVAN > > Many readers have written to me recently, given the federal budget crisis, > to make a simple request: Please advocate for news stories that put large > numbers in context. If The Times does not do that, they say, it is part of > the problem, and if it does do so, other news organizations are very likely > to follow suit. > > George Markell of San Francisco is one of these. He wrote: > > I agree that The New York Times should report federal spending items as a > percentage of the budget, not just in dollars. I’m a retired copy editor, > and I think this would be very helpful to your readers. > > Of course, not everybody has been quite so restrained about it. A headline > in Nation of Change put it this way: “Tea Party and New York Times Shut > Down Government.” > > I’m all for anything that makes The Times clearer and more useful to its > readers. This is a completely reasonable request with obvious benefits to > all. > > Toward that end, I just finished speaking with David Leonhardt, someone > who is well positioned to do something about this. Not only is he the > Washington bureau chief, but he also is a Pulitzer Prize-winning economics > writer. (Mr. Leonhardt even majored in applied mathematics in college but, > as he notes, that didn’t keep him from making a rather public math error: > “I once confused million and billion on the front page of The New York > Times.”) > > He agrees that there is a problem, and told me that The Times is already > working on a solution. A small group of editors is “thinking through a > whole set of issues about how we present numbers,” he told me. The results, > he said, will probably be determined within a couple of months. They might > take the form of new entries to the stylebook, announcements within > newsroom departments or e-mails laying out new guidelines to the whole news > staff. > > “The readers are right,” he told me. “We should do better.” > > Part of the problem, he said, is that “the human mind isn’t equipped” to > deal with very large numbers. When people see these numbers, he said, they > read it as “a lot of money” or “a really big number.” > > One answer, as many have suggested, is expressing individual budget > figures – consistently – as a percentage of the whole. Another, he said, is > in making comparisons. For example, he said, a $10 billion figure might be > put in context by comparing it with other costs, like the annual defense > and Social Security budgets. > > “It begins to help people understand,” Mr. Leonhardt said. > > And while he noted that the recent pressure for change is “coming from the > left,” specifically the economist-writer Dean Baker and MoveOn.org – which > now has more than 18,000 signatures on a petition — this is not a partisan > issue. > > “Math has neither a conservative nor a liberal bias,” Mr. Leonhardt said. > > The Times began grappling with the numbers questions a few months ago, he > said, as the time neared for the conversion of The International Herald > Tribune to The International New York Times. Many countries report economic > data differently than does the United States, and that has to be explained > and reconciled, Mr. Leonhardt said. > > In the meantime, he said, Washington reporters have already been reminded > to add percentages whenever they use large budget numbers, and a new > stylebook entry has been written on one of the subtopics, inflation. > > It won’t be easy to make these changes happen consistently, especially in > stories written on deadline. But, from the reader’s point of view, the > effort will be worthwhile – and the sooner, the better. > > -- > Robert Naiman > Policy Director > Just Foreign Policy > www.justforeignpolicy.org > [email protected] > > > _______________________________________________ > pen-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l > > -- Facebook: Gar Lipow Twitter: GarLipow Solving the Climate Crisis web page: SolvingTheClimateCrisis.com Grist Blog: http://grist.org/author/gar-lipow/ Online technical reference: http://www.nohairshirts.com
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