Comments on: Newsroom Skills: The Bosses Speak Out http://ryanthornburg.com/2008/07/21/newsroom-skills-the-bosses-speak-out/ Ryan Thornburg Tue, 06 Sep 2011 13:54:34 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: Joe http://ryanthornburg.com/2008/07/21/newsroom-skills-the-bosses-speak-out/#comment-41 Mon, 21 Jul 2008 20:43:24 +0000 http://www.ryanthornburg.org/blog/2008/07/21/newsroom-skills-the-bosses-speak-out/#comment-41 Hi Ryan,
What jumps out at me is that 17% find data analysis to be not too important overall. This is one of the reason snarky bloggers have such a field day with newspaper reporting, whether it is in a dead trees edition or a digital edition. Data analysis allows a reporter to provide context for a story. An oldie, but a goodie. The annual flock of coverage for the NWS’ hurricane prediction data brings substantial amount of coverage, especially post-Katrina. What is often not reported is the context to go with it. Simple data analysis would show the standard deviation between NWS prediction and actual numbers. Including trending would be better.

Another oldie but goodie. Most folks regard an increase in the minimum wage, which is happening today, if memory serves, as a good thing, but critics will be given their time in a small graf saying in effect, “Critics argue that increases in the minimum wage tighten the jobs market and should instead be tied to inflation increases.” However, that is hardly an adequate analysis of the data or of the story itself. I remember from my high school economics classes that economists had determined every $0.25 increase of the minimum wage resulted in the loss of 100,000 jobs from the economy. Whether that is apocryphal now I cannot say, having not researched the statistics in oh 15 years, give or take.

However, my overall perspective is that more than internet skills or multimedia skills, data analysis is an undervalued commodity in newsrooms. But I’m not an editor. I’m a consumer and I don’t consume much news anymore via traditional media sources.

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