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Columbia Journalism Review content tagged Statistics

1. November 14, 2012 06:50 AM

   Apples and oranges on Google and publishers

   Print performance is bad enough without putting a thumb on the scale

   By Ryan Chittum

   Slate tells us that "Google ad revenue tops entire US print media industry" in the first six months of the year, based off this chart from a German outfit called Statista: Business Insider makes it its "CHART OF THE DAY" and says "Google Is Bigger Than The U.S. Print Ad Business." That's (sort of) accurate, but misleading. There's an apples-to-oranges...

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2. July 2, 2012 11:00 AM

   Inflating the regulatory state

   TSA and border security account for almost all the increase in regulatory staff since 1980

   By Ryan Chittum

   A Bloomberg News story last week on how the folks who oversee the regulators are overmatched these days raises a question: What's a regulator? Here's the lede (emphasis mine) As the U.S. government’s regulatory bureaucracy has ballooned, one agency has been left behind: the office that oversees the regulators. The regulatory bureaucracy has ballooned? That doesn't sound right. The federal...

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3. December 6, 2010 11:29 AM

   Journalists Need to Do the Math

   Numbers still make many watchdogs whimper

   By Justin D. Martin

   CAIRO—I tell my students that in addition to English they should learn two more languages: an in-demand foreign tongue, and statistics. Studying Chinese or Hindi is a great move for an aspiring reporter, but numbers are the true global language. Journalists who can amass and interpret data can cover more of the world in a short time than reporters who...

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4. April 16, 2012 05:25 AM

   Statistics and Moral Sense

   A dialogue about Justin Martin’s “Which Countries Jail the Most Journalists Per Capita?”

   By Sohrab Ahmari

   Editor’s note: This piece begins with journalist Sohrab Ahmari’s criticisms of Justin D. Martin’s recent article. Martin’s response comes next, then Ahmari closes it out with a response of his own. In recent years, the Columbia Journalism Review has devoted special attention to the use and misuse of statistics in American journalism, taking reporters to task when they have fallen...

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