The Times Is Working on Ways to Make Numbers-Based Stories Clearer for Readers
▻http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/18/the-times-is-working-on-ways-to-make-numbers-based-stori
Concernant les chiffres, le New York Times décide de ne plus en parler isolément sans les mettre en perspective,
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. (...)
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.
Ceci après une série de critiques,
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.
Réaction de Dean Baker,
Numbers in Context : Big Congrats to the New York Times and Margaret Sullivan
▻http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/numbers-in-context-big-congrats-to-the-new-york-times-and-margaret-sullivan
Anyhow, we will see exactly how the NYT ends up dealing with the issue, but they deserve a great deal of credit for recognizing the problem and trying to address it. Margaret Sullivan, the paper’s public editor, deserves special credit for taking this one on and pressing it with the paper’s edtors. Also Bob Naiman, at Just Foreign Policy, played an important role in initiating a petition at Move-On on this issue, which eventually got almost 19,000 signatures. That’s pretty impressive for the ultimate wonk petition.