If your mother says she loves you...

One of the basic rules of good journalism is not only getting information first but also getting it right.

The recent dust up over Justice Roberts' supposed resignation is a good example of law students not checking out their sources.

Anatomy of a Rumor: The Story Behind Chief Justice John Roberts’s ‘Retirement’

By the way, I am really getting to like the OnMason blog site. I am half tempted to move this site to that platform soon.

Demographics of American newspapers

I'm trying out my OnMason blog site.

Go here to see an old chestnut.

Getting the subject-verb agreement right

ARGH!

I don't like it but I am almost ready to give up complaining when people say/write, "media is."

But when the venerable Gray Lady decides subject-verb agreement is no longer necessary, I guess we might as well all just give up.

It should be "Data show..."

IT resume tips that also work in journalism

Toni Bowers did a quick entry at TechRepublic on resume writing.

Quick resume tip: Hone your Job Objective statement

I thought what she wrote is good advice and now pass it on to you for your students.

Recession and booze - Getting the story

Journalism is more than just repeating numbers and getting a pithy quote. Good reporting also provides context. It helps explain why a story is important.

The Detroit Free Press ran a piece over the weekend on how the number of liquor licenses keeps increasing despite the dwindling population in the Metro Detroit area.

Liquor flows in abundance despite population decline

My first reaction to the headline -- from the front page teaser -- was that the article would be about how much liquor is being sold. From that I would hope the reporter would ask experts to comment on whether the hard times Michigan is facing is leading to the increase in liquor sales. And then what are the social concerns of more people feeling depressed (due to job loss) and drinking more.

• Are drunk and disorderly arrests up?
• How about domestic violence?
• Divorces/separations?

But no. The 300-word article is about the formula for issuing liquor licenses and how the numbers are askew. Nothing at all about the actual flow of liquor.

I understand limited resources the newspaper has. But how hard would it have been to get some sample numbers of actual liquor sales? Up? Down? Has having more distribution points (bars) meant an increase in sales or are the sales just being spread out over more places?

And then, as I said before, there are the social issues.

Are more people spending more time in bars? If so, what does that do to the community and families?

Context: A vital part of journalism

I just unloaded on some of the reporting coming out of Haiti, especially the reporting on the 10 just-released Baptist missionaries.

Rather than repeat everything here, go to DR and Haiti stories: Where's the context?

TBH, I've been shouting at the reporting since the first day of the earthquake. Granted, most of it is pretty straight forward but there was/is enough to get me riled.

I worked on search and rescue during the 1985 Mexico City earthquakes (8.1 and 7.8). Most of the SAR techniques used in Haiti came from the experiences in Mexico. The SAR teams from the USA and Europe all credit the work done in Mexico as the reason their teams and training are set up the way they are.

Yet, there was nothing about this in the media reports. (Hint: GMU j-students, go talk to the Fairfax County special team that went to Haiti. They will explain how 1985 shaped what they are doing today.)

And now there are stories about Baptists, child trafficking and Dominican-Haitian relations.

Is it really too much to expect that there should be SOME explanatory grafs in these stories to talk about what is going on beyond the immediate?

Context! Context Context!

It sure seems to be missing in most of the stories I have seen/heard on Haiti.

Working with numbers

The Gallup Survey folks came out with a survey indicating what state had the most churchgoers.

The survey showed that Mississippi led the nation with 63 percent of the people saying they attended a religious service weekly or almost weekly.

The top-10 church attendance states are:

State	% attend weekly religious services
Mississippi	63
Alabama	58
South Carolina	56
Louisiana	56
Utah	56
Tennessee	54
Arkansas	53
North Carolina	53
Georgia	51
Texas	50

You will notice that most of these states are in the South.

The states that showed the fewest number of people attending regular church services come mostly from the Northeast and Northwest.

State	% attend weekly religious services
Vermont	23
New Hampshire	26
Maine	27
Massachusetts	29
Nevada	30
Hawaii	31
Oregon	31
Alaska	31
Washington	32
Rhode Island	32
Connecticut	32

Alone these numbers are interesting if you are going to do a story about regular church attendance.

But let’s look further.

Is there a relationship between education and regular church attendance. Conventional wisdom says the more educated a person is, the less likely he or she will regularly attend religious service.

Let’s compare some date.

Thanks to the U.S. Census Bureau, we can come up with a chart that provides the education level of each state.

It is easy enough to work through the Census Bureau web site (www.census.gov) to create a custom table that will give us the basic information we need to use to start the comparison.

All taken from the 2006-2008 American Community Survey 3-Year Estimates

So now we can look at how education and regular religious service attendance compare.

State	Ranking of religious attendance	Percentage of college graduates compared to population	Ranking of 50 states plus DC and PR for college graduates
Mississippi	1	12	51
Alabama	2	14	46
South Carolina	3	15	38
Louisiana	4	13	48
Utah	5	16	29
Tennessee	6	15	44
Arkansas	7	12	49
North Carolina	8	17	27
Georgia	9	17	24
Texas	10	16	37
Vermont	51	23	6
New Hampshire	50	22	7
Maine	49	18	18
Massachusetts	48	25	2
Nevada	47	14	44
Hawaii	46	20	13
Oregon	45	19	15
Alaska	44	16	28
Washington	43	20	11
Rhode Island	42	20	12
Connecticut	41	23	3

A similar pattern emerges when frequency of religious attendance is compared with a state’s ranking for populations with at least a 12^th grade education but not a high school graduate.

This proves everything, right? Numbers don’t lie, do they?

It’s not so much that numbers don’t lie but they are not the whole story.

Nevada is #1 has 1.85% of its population with 12 years of schooling but no degree. It sits at number 44 among the states and territories for college graduates. And it is one of the least religious states in the survey.

Why do you think? (Hint: In what state is Las Vegas and Reno located? Another hint: What state showed the largest housing boom – and bust – in the past five years?)

The numbers get you started. And you can use them to help build the structure of your story but real work is explaining what the numbers mean and putting a human face to them.

___________________________________________________

Oh, and it only took me about 45 minutes to look up the data on the Census Bureau web page, save the file as an Excel document and do the quick and dirty analysis. So "not having enough time" doesn't work as an excuse.