In fact, it’s hard to get much out of the graphics beyond playing the “where-do-I-fit-in” game. The site offers no summary of what the data means, and although it’s fun to watch the visuals change when you select a new occupational filter, it does make it hard to compare the statistics for two or more groups. What’s more, the explanation of where this data actually comes from is squished into a small, italicized paragraph in the corner. It’s almost as if the New York Times feared that any description of data collection or summary of findings would spoil the mysterious allure of its stylized graphics.


The Los Angeles Times, on the other hand, provides detailed descriptions of its own research methods both within the text of the articles, and in a separate piece labeled “The Source of the Statistics and How They Were Analyzed.”


As for the Journal series, it lies somewhere in the middle, presenting the findings of many studies and surveys to accompany its descriptions of individuals caught in the various swirls, tides and eddies of social mobility, but still falling short in its explanation of the methods behind the statistics. Indeed, the Journal’s editorial page, which operates on a different plane (some might say a different planet) than the paper’s newsroom, printed an article by Alan Reynolds on May 18 that criticized the presentation of data by both the Journal and the New York Times. Reynolds’ point: what scholars are actually saying about class in America is not nearly so dramatic as the papers are making it out to be.


Reynolds objects in particular to the New York Times’ claim that “new research on mobility, the movement of families up and down the economic ladder, shows there is far less of it than economists once thought and less than most people believe.” As he reads the mobility findings, they are still weak, oppositional, and at best “suggestive” of trends, but by no means conclusive. He argues that the only reason that both the Times and the Journal have rushed these findings to the front page is that “income distribution is an agenda-driven ideological fixation that frequently impairs journalistic judgment.”


Reynolds’ critique is worth reading simply for the fact that it’s so cranky; let’s face it, it’s once in a blue moon that you’re going to find an editorial page grouchily announcing. “Don’t believe this newspapers’ reporters!” But Reynolds’ contention begs a point, perhaps because he did not include the Los Angeles Times in his jeremiad: If the issue is so agenda-driven, why is the Los Angeles paper the only one of the three that comes close to putting forward an actual agenda?


Meantime, with its “Class Matters” series still unfolding — and unfolding, and unfolding — there’s time for the New York Times to come to a killer conclusion that ties together its micro-analyses with some macro-level conclusions. Or some explanation of where those spicy interactive graphics came from, and what they mean. Or a nod to the policy implications of all of this. Or something that lifts the series from a touching but disjointed bunch of anecdotes to the level of a cohesive and significant treatment of a slippery but important subject.


Let’s hope, huh?


(Editor’s Note: An earlier posting of this review incorrectly stated that the New York Times series was to end on Sunday, June 5. The reference has been corrected.)