SHORTENING THE BASEBALL EXPERIENCE. My father used to say when he read complaints about baseball games being too long that it was sportswriters who made the biggest fuss about long games because they wanted to get their work over with. I think it’s still true. I haven’t heard any fans complaining about a Red Sox-Yankee game being too long. They are usually exciting and the excitement builds during the game. I use the Red Sox and Yankees as an example because a veteran major league umpire has created a controversy by calling the Yankees and Red Sox “pathetic” and “embarrassing” because their games that he had recently umpired had lasted too long. I want to suggest one mitigating circumstance for the umpire: I think the commissioner’s office may be making a misguided effort to shorten games by pressuring umpires to pressure players. Nevertheless, the comments suggest the troubling inference that the umpires—like some sportswriters—are eager to get their job over with. The players and manager quoted in this article criticize the umpire’s statements as possibly showing bias. Mariano Rivera explicitly says: “If he has places to go, let him do something else.”
Archive for the ‘Journalism’ Category
SHORTENING THE BASEBALL EXPERIENCE?
Saturday, April 10th, 2010“HEADLESS BODY IN TOPLESS BAR” REVISITED.
Wednesday, February 24th, 2010“HEADLESS BODY IN TOPLESS BAR” REVISITED. The most famous headline in the newspaper of record in our house (the New York Post) was “HEADLESS BODY IN TOPLESS BAR.” The Post just had an update on the story. If you’re curious, the update recounts the original story and reports that the killer was denied parole this month for the third time in 27 years. The update points out that the decapitation was not necessarily the act of a madman. The killer was trying to remove evidence. He was concerned that the bullet in the head could lead to ballistics evidence against him. Note that this is consistent with the Bryan Caplan thesis that I mentioned yesterday, “that many seemingly insane people are not irrational, but merely have unusual preferences.”
AN OPTIMISTIC ECONOMIC LOOK AT THE LAST DECADE.
Tuesday, January 5th, 2010AN OPTIMISTIC ECONOMIC LOOK AT THE LAST DECADE. As people look back in dismay on the last decade, Tyler Cowen points out in this article in the New York Times that important good things happened during the decade. Many of the poorer countries in the world had solid economic growth for the decade. China, India, Indonesia and Brazil, accounting for more than 40 percent of the world’s people, all made great strides during the decade. Cowen, in a related post at his Marginal Revolution blog, links to this post about how “In recent years, a broad swath of African countries has begun to show a remarkable dynamism.” Reviews of a decade should address these developments, but as Cowen notes: “One lesson from all of this is that steady economic growth is an underreported news story.”
RELATING TO PEOPLE THROUGH NEWSPAPER ARTICLES.
Friday, November 20th, 2009RELATING TO PEOPLE THROUGH NEWSPAPER ARTICLES. Annalisa tells me that she has described me to people who haven’t met me as some one who relates to people through newspaper articles. I think it’s a pretty apt description both of me and of what I am trying to do through this blog. I like the description because I remember that my family used to relate to each other in that way, at the breakfast table and in the living room after dinner as we read and called out to each other from what we were reading. Later, my parents would send me envelopes full of newspaper articles, and so would my sweet Aunt Dorothy and my teacher Lois Larson. Annalisa’s description seems a good way to mark the third anniversary of this blog. Thanks to all the readers and commenters for the encouragement.
HARMFUL HEADLINES.
Thursday, October 22nd, 2009HARMFUL HEADLINES. The author of the article, Gina Kolata, is a good science writer, but I don’t understand how or why the article was written, and it seems to me that it can be harmful. The article indicates that the American Cancer Society is “quietly” working on a statement about mammograms to be published next year, and yet the article quotes a spokesman for the Society giving what amounts to vague statements depreciating the value of mammograms. A biostatistician at Sloan-Kettering is quoted as saying; “I am concerned that the complex view of a changing landscape will be distilled by the public into yet another ‘screening does not work’ headline.” Ironically, the headline of the article is: “Cancer Society, in Shift, Has Concerns on Screenings.” And—again ironically—The first sentence of the article is: “The American Cancer Society, which has long been a staunch defender of most cancer screening, is now saying that the benefits of detecting many cancers, especially breast and prostate, have been overstated.”
BALANCING BENEFITS AND COSTS OF MAMMOGRAMS.
Thursday, October 22nd, 2009BALANCING BENEFITS AND COSTS OF MAMMOGRAMS. My brother Elmer and I were independently struck by this article—and struck by the same sentence in the article. The point of the article is that “the American Cancer Society is now saying that the benefits of detecting many cancers, especially breast and prostate, have been overstated.” The sentence refers to a new study just published this week. Here is the troubling sentence: “In [the new study], researchers report a 40 percent increase in breast cancer diagnoses and a near doubling of early stage cancers, but just a 10 percent decline in cancers that have spread beyond the breast to the lymph nodes or elsewhere in the body.” It is the “just a 10 percent decline” phrase that disturbed my brother and me. If a breast cancer has spread to the lymph nodes or beyond, survival rates are dramatically affected. Patients who are diagnosed after the cancer has spread beyond the breast will be subject to the terrors of heightened danger, even if they survive. In other words, the ten per cent decline is a large benefit, which must be balanced against the costs of the overdiagnosis which is included in the 40 % increase in total diagnoses. The facts in the article indicate that the decision by a person to have a cancer test will require balancing several probabilities and evaluating the consequences of various outcomes. Hopefully, the new guidelines which the American Cancer Society seems to be working on will lay out those considerations in detail.
IS A WARNING TO READERS NEWS THAT’S FIT TO PRINT?
Wednesday, September 16th, 2009IS A WARNING TO READERS NEWS THAT’S FIT TO PRINT? I encountered a scary fake antivirus popup over the weekend—one of the kinds if virus that you can’t close without shutting down your computer and losing the sites you were looking at. I found out from a blog yesterday that it’s the New York Times site that is spreading the virus. (I just finished reviewing recent posts and I have not linked to the Times for a while so this blog hasn’t spread the virus. If you ever look at the Times site, you may want to look at the links that follow). I get the Times in my inbox every morning so that must be where I got the problem. It is amazing to me that the Times did nothing to notify readers of the problem. They did not e mail me of the problem and they buried the news story. Here is the index for September 14—no mention of what happened. To find this news story, I would have had to click on “More Media $ Advertising News.” The editorial policy of the Times is frequently criticized. Here is a news story which was of interest to almost every reader—and could prevent possible harm to every reader— but it was a story that was unfavorable to the Times—so it was buried.
A DELAYED SCOOP.
Wednesday, September 9th, 2009A DELAYED SCOOP. Ray Connelly says in his article that he knew that John Lennon had caused the breakup of the Beatles even though the breakup was attributed in the press to Paul McCartney’s actions. Connelly knew this at the time because of tape recorded interviews he had with Lennon. The article can be looked at as a scoop that is published forty years after the fact.
MICHAEL KINSLEY ON SOURCE GREASERS.
Thursday, July 16th, 2009MICHAEL KINSLEY ON SOURCE GREASERS. I posted here on my discovery on the blog Kausfiles of a name for a story which is slanted toward an anonymous source. It’s a “source-greaser.” I wasn’t sure at the time whether the phrase in common usage among journalists. Now Mickey Kaus links to an article about source greasing by Michael Kinsley. Kinsley says that the term goes way back: “Long before Wikipedia, the term “source greaser” (or, for the dainty, “beat sweetener”) referred to a favorable news article about a public official, published in the hope of inducing cooperation in the future.” Kinsley has an amusing analysis of the conventions of the form (”The subject always puts in heroically long hours.”) I worried about how readers could not know how a typical news story is slanted to favor an anonymous source, but source greaser stories should be easy to spot. Kinsley is worried about other issues, saying: “With the demise of newspapers, the important job of currying favor with big shots will disappear as well.”
BIRDS AND JOURNALISTS AND TELEPHONE WIRES.
Monday, June 22nd, 2009BIRDS AND JOURNALISTS AND TELEPHONE WIRES. Senator Eugene McCarthy said that nobody can explain why journalists focus on one news story for a while and suddenly shift to another story. He compared the journalists to a flock of birds that will suddenly move from one telephone wire to another without explanation.
