Knife crime stats fracas

Knife-carrying down in 'hotspots'
Stop and search blitz cuts knife attacks
Crime falls in knife crackdown areas
UK knife crackdown leads to fall in stabbings

These were the headlines of some major news sources the day before the head of the UK Statistics Authority said the figures were irregular.

Many journalists reproduce statistics unchallenged. The same reporters would never publish information in other forms without checking its veracity. The UK government knows this and so has increasingly used figures to spin a story, knowing it is less likely they will be challenged (certainly by the press).

I suspect that some would blame the modern publishing environment which does not leave us time to check source material as rigorously as we would like. But the truth is most journalists hate mathematics; are scared of mathematics.

But checking stats is part of the job: we cannot rely on the head of the UK Statistics Authority always to be on hand. So here are a couple of simple pointers that would have prevented the knife crime story being taken at face value:

• Never accept information where the full statistics are not made available to you
• Be particularly suspicious of data that concentrates on hotspots.

See also How Sources, Reporters View Math Errors in News

New words in 2008

Medal became a verb in 2008 (the team includes athletes who have medalled at Olympic, World and European level) while fail became a noun (that is an epic fail).

The New York Times gives us frugalista and recessionista.

Headlines: Deep Throat dies

Deep Throat has died at the age of 95.

Former FBI official Mark Felt admitted in 2005 that he was the anonymous source used by Bob Woodward during his investigation of the Watergate scandal which brought down President Nixon.

Headline writers have come to various conclusions about how much detail to include at the top of this story.

Watergate scandal informant dies
BBC News

Watergate's Deep Throat, Mark Felt, dies
Guardian

W. Mark Felt, Watergate Deep Throat, Dies at 95
New York Times

For search engine optimisation you probably want Deep Throat to be prominent but it seems a disrespectful way to refer to someone who has just died. The BBC uses only the keyword Watergate.

Most other news sources use Deep Throat, but also include his name, Mark Felt, producing a more elegant, if longer, head. The name may also be a term some people search on.

The NY Times, Washington Post, Daily Telegraph and others include his age. This is important in defining the scale of the news story. For most readers, there is a big difference between someone dying at 25 and at 95. However, this produces a longer headline: NY Times is 8 words compared with the BBC's 4.

Search engines also care about which word comes first. Here is the first word chosen by some news sources:

Watergate
BBC News
Guardian
Telegraph
Times

Deep
Washington Post

W Mark
New York Times

Search engine optimisation means working out the significant words in a story and pushing those words towards the beginning of the story. The first word in the headline is particularly important. In this story the following words are significant:
Watergate
Deep Throat
Mark Felt
dies
95
Nixon
FBI
scandal
source
Woodward

The most significant should appear in head. The others should appear early in the story.

Santa insanity

Stories with Santa in them are mainstream news this time of year:

• The Santa in New Zealand who said the f-word while trying to say thank you in Norwegian.
• The teacher who was sacked for telling pupils Santa doesn't exist.
• The bobcat who bit Santa in New Jersey (people take bobcats to see Santa?).
• The Santa who got a parking ticket on his sleigh (this is becoming a Christmas tradition).

The right to poke fun

Elton John's libel action against the Guardian was thrown out yesterday because the judge said the disputed article was satirical rather than factual.

John claimed that the meaning of the column A peak in the diary of... Elton John (written by Marina Hyde and published on 5 July) was that he was insincere about the Elton John Aids Foundation and that he used it for self-promotion rather than to raise money.




The meaning that matters in a libel case is what would be understood by a reasonable person in the worst case.

The High Court Judge, Mr Justice Tugendhat, ruled that words Marina Hyde used were obviously a form of teasing and that no reader would take the statements to be factual. The article (view here) is written in the voice of Elton John and is not presented as a news story.

In a statement, the Guardian said: the judgment is an important recognition of the right to poke the occasional bit of fun.

Advertising: a warning from 1974

Advertising during recession works, although the beleaguered publishing industry is having a tough job convincing its clients.

This from Direct Marketing magazine 1991:
[The American Business Press (ABP) analysed] the severe 1974 to 1975 recession. Relying on questionnaires submitted by advertisers, the study tracked the sales and profits growth of 173 industrial companies between 1972 and 1977. The companies were divided into two groups: those that reduced advertising during the recession; and those that did not reduce advertising,

The study found that the companies that reduced advertising achieved minimal sales growth in 1974, suffered a sales decline in 1975 and increased sales by 70 percent during the five-year period. For companies that maintained their ad budgets, sales suffered no slowdown during the recession and grew 150 percent for the entire period. Profits showed a similar pattern. Most notably, the momentum gained by the steady advertisers during the recession helped them to grow at a faster rate in 1976 and 1977.

The original article can be found at Allbusiness.com.

Headline: the pun is dead

The witty, punning headline is finished when it comes to the internet. The greatest headlines of the web era will be the most functional ones and they’re unlikely to be remembered by anybody.

So writes Shane Richmond, communities editor of Telegraph.co.uk in an article on SEO in the British Review of Journalism.

For the web, headlines must be direct, short and obvious. That will ensure they are also search engine friendly and suitable for an RSS feed. Here is how you write a web headline:

1. Condense your story into a single 20-word sentence (if you haven't already done so).
2. Decide which 3 of those words carry the most meaning.
3. Check that the three words are the terms people are likely to search on, looking for your story. If not, find search-friendly synonyms.
4. Put the most significant word first.
5. If necessary, add some other words to create your headline.

For example:

Royal Mail is "bullying" postal workers into walking faster on their rounds in an effort to save money, union officials claimed today.
Key words might be

• faster
• postal
• bullying

Postal is an unlikely search term. Post or postmen are better. Postmen is probably also the most significant word in the story. So the headline might read:

Postmen bullied to walk faster

The original story came from The Guardian whose headline was

Postal workers 'told to walk faster'

Postal workers is a term that people are unlikely to search on but I suppose it removes gender bias. Told carries less meaning than bullied.

The people: web writing secret

The Irish government is expected soon to pledge to hold a second, high-risk referendum on the EU's reform blueprint within less than a year, writes The Guardian today.

What's happening within less than a year? It takes a moment to work out, doesn't it? That's fatal in web writing. You get seconds to tell the reader what's going on and to get them interested in it.



The problem is that we have expecting, pledging and holding all happening in quick succession. One verb per sentence is plenty but sometimes the information is too complicated and we need more. Here we have to understand three things to make sense of the story:

• The Lisbon Treaty which reforms the EU
• The rejection of it by Irish voters in a referendum in June
• The need for a new referendum

Tough work in a single sentence which also has to get us interested in the whole thing.

Irish voters who rejected the Lisbon Treaty in June will be asked to vote again on the issue next year, paving the way for controversial EU laws to be introduced in Britain is how the Telegraph covered the same story.

It is still complicated: we have rejected, asked, to vote, paving and introduced all in one sentence. But changing the viewpoint from the Irish government to Irish voters seems to make it easier to understand.

This is a good general rule. In order of preference, make your writing about:

1. Real individual people
2. Groups of people
3. Organisations
4. Intangible or abstract nouns

Only consider 3 or 4 if you really cannot make it work with 1 or 2.

News approaches on the web

Failing U.S. carmaker General Motors says it will run out of cash this month unless the taxpayer comes up with $4billion (£2.68billion) immediately, reported The Mail on 3 December.

This 21 word intro presents a complex news story simply and clearly but also manages to include elements that will grab the reader's attention:

• Real people the reader will care about -- the taxpayer
• A big number -- $4billion
• An urgency -- immediately

Here is how the Washington Post started the same story on the same day:

General Motors, an icon of American manufacturing and the world's largest automaker, yesterday threw itself at the mercy of Congress, saying it needed $4 billion to avert a cash crisis by the end of the month and as much as $18 billion in federal loans over the next year.

This version has the big number and the urgency but lacks the human element. It also requires the reader to process a 49-word sentence with a diversion into a sub-clause almost immediately. There is so much information on the web and it is so easy to find, that readers tend to be impatient. This means that a 25-word sentence containing a single thought is plenty, even for an intellectual audience.

The WP writers know their intro is not grabbing attention so they have hyped it up:

• ...an icon of...
• ...threw itself at the mercy...

But sadly these cliches tend to deaden writing rather than enliven it. Talking of cliche, this is how the Times of India reported the story:

To tide over the turbulent times, the beleaguered auto makers are leaving no stone turned [sic] to secure financial aid from the US, with Chief Executives of General Motors and Ford even ready for an annual salary of one dollar.

US and British English

US and British English are different but often the differences matter little.

Even if you notice that colour is spelled color, for example, you will still understand what the writer means.

The important thing is to standardise (or standardize) on one version of the language or the other. The reader certainly will notice if you keep changing the way you do things. The decision on which will depend where the bulk of your readers live.

However, there are some differences in the use of the language which are less well known.

That was quite good to an American means that was very good. To a Brit it means that was approaching good (not as good as good).

If you are writing in the version of English which is less natural for you, there are all sorts of pitfalls like this. It is therefore worth considering the predominant origin of the writers as well as the readers when you choose which version to standardise on.

This blog is in British English, but I am currently in Washington DC. Last night a waitress asked me are you getting dessert? I understood this but my first thought was that she was asking me whether I had behaved well enough to deserve a dessert. In Britain I would have been asked would you like dessert?

Suggestions of obscure differences between US and UK English gratefully received.