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Workshop Registration
The Reynolds Center has announced its 2009-10 free workshop schedule.
Select a workshop and register from the drop-down menu below.
Online Seminars
The Reynolds Center registration for Fall 2009 free online seminars.
Hooked on Kindle
By Chris Roush
Tracking the Business Behind the Tomato
By Jonathan Higuera
Five Questions with Bill Choyke
By Jonathan Higuera
Finding the Economy's Silver Lining
By Dick Weiss
Double Whammy: Oil and Housing
By Jennifer Hopfinger
Tips to Make Numbers Your Best Friend
By Curt Hazlett
Numbers are the business journalist's best friend, and how we employ them in our stories is crucial to success. Here are four tips for using them well:
- Numbers numb; don't overdo them. Jack Hart, the managing editor in charge of training at The Oregonian in Portland, offers this story as an example of one that bludgeons readers with so many numbers that its meaning is nearly lost:
The U.S. Agriculture Department estimates farmers nationwide will ship more than 35 million trees this season, up from the previous high of 34.3 million trees sold in 1988. The volume has increased by as much as 2.5 percent annually for the past 15 years, at least twice the growth rate of the U.S. population....
Farmers are receiving $7 to $11 from wholesale buyers for each top-grade Douglas fir, 6 to 7 feet tall, compared with $8 to $11 last year, Ostlund reported. The price varies by quantity and quality, he explained, and some smaller growers lacking a strong relationship with a buyer are getting $1 less this season.
"Simply passing all those numbers along to readers is no better than uncritically passing along any kind of press-release information," Hart advises. "Such practices undercut our standing as tough-minded, independent sources of information."
Help readers visualize big numbers. To paraphrase Joseph Stalin, "The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of a million is a statistic." Express numbers in a way that readers can easily relate to them. Some examples:
The Shaw Corp. estimates that the construction of the new off-ramp will require 1,000 cubic yards of fill, a mound of dirt about the size of a two-story house.
The value of Gates' stock reached an incredible $81.4 billion. To put that in perspective: That's 209,357,326 14-ounce tins of Beluga caviar or 513 Boeing 747s, or nearly the gross domestic product of Israel.
- Be vigilant for stretched data. Statisticians sometimes use something called regression analysis to compare and connect events. It's a valid technique, but it can be stretched too far. Notes journalism educator Robert Niles, "A study might find that an increase in the local birth rate was correlated with the annual migration of storks over the town. This does not mean that the storks brought the babies. Or that the babies brought the storks."
- Don't confuse the reader. The Oregonian's Hart suggests that the following paragraph, intended to help readers understand the economics of a new cancer, wound up confusing the issues instead:
Although estimates vary, taxol costs about $22,000 an ounce. It takes 9,000 pounds of dry bark to produce a pound of taxol.
"We regularly ask readers to do the math instead of doing it ourselves," he notes. "When we cite numbers, let's make them easily comparable. If taxol is $22,000 an ounce, we don't care how much bark it takes to make a pound. We care how much it takes to make an ounce. There are 16 ounces in a pound. Ergo, it takes a little over 560 pounds of bark to make an ounce. Or, to run at it from a different direction, 9,000 pounds of bark will produce a pound of taxol worth $352,000."
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Copyright © 2008 Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism
The Reynolds Center has announced its 2009-10 free workshop schedule.
Select a workshop and register from the drop-down menu below.
The Reynolds Center registration for Fall 2009 free online seminars.
By Chris Roush
Tracking the Business Behind the Tomato
By Jonathan Higuera
Five Questions with Bill Choyke
By Jonathan Higuera
Finding the Economy's Silver Lining
By Dick Weiss
Double Whammy: Oil and Housing
By Jennifer Hopfinger
Tips to Make Numbers Your Best Friend
By Curt Hazlett
Numbers are the business journalist's best friend, and how we employ them in our stories is crucial to success. Here are four tips for using them well:
- Numbers numb; don't overdo them. Jack Hart, the managing editor in charge of training at The Oregonian in Portland, offers this story as an example of one that bludgeons readers with so many numbers that its meaning is nearly lost:
The U.S. Agriculture Department estimates farmers nationwide will ship more than 35 million trees this season, up from the previous high of 34.3 million trees sold in 1988. The volume has increased by as much as 2.5 percent annually for the past 15 years, at least twice the growth rate of the U.S. population....
Farmers are receiving $7 to $11 from wholesale buyers for each top-grade Douglas fir, 6 to 7 feet tall, compared with $8 to $11 last year, Ostlund reported. The price varies by quantity and quality, he explained, and some smaller growers lacking a strong relationship with a buyer are getting $1 less this season.
"Simply passing all those numbers along to readers is no better than uncritically passing along any kind of press-release information," Hart advises. "Such practices undercut our standing as tough-minded, independent sources of information."
Help readers visualize big numbers. To paraphrase Joseph Stalin, "The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of a million is a statistic." Express numbers in a way that readers can easily relate to them. Some examples:
The value of Gates' stock reached an incredible $81.4 billion. To put that in perspective: That's 209,357,326 14-ounce tins of Beluga caviar or 513 Boeing 747s, or nearly the gross domestic product of Israel.
- Be vigilant for stretched data. Statisticians sometimes use something called regression analysis to compare and connect events. It's a valid technique, but it can be stretched too far. Notes journalism educator Robert Niles, "A study might find that an increase in the local birth rate was correlated with the annual migration of storks over the town. This does not mean that the storks brought the babies. Or that the babies brought the storks."
- Don't confuse the reader. The Oregonian's Hart suggests that the following paragraph, intended to help readers understand the economics of a new cancer, wound up confusing the issues instead:
"We regularly ask readers to do the math instead of doing it ourselves," he notes. "When we cite numbers, let's make them easily comparable. If taxol is $22,000 an ounce, we don't care how much bark it takes to make a pound. We care how much it takes to make an ounce. There are 16 ounces in a pound. Ergo, it takes a little over 560 pounds of bark to make an ounce. Or, to run at it from a different direction, 9,000 pounds of bark will produce a pound of taxol worth $352,000."
Copyright © 2008 Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism