Tag: journalism

Cardiologists and Chinese Robbers

~ Mark

There are over a billion Chinese people. If even one in a thousand is a robber, you can provide one million examples of Chinese robbers to appease the doubters. Most people think of stereotyping as “Here’s one example I heard of where the out-group does something bad,” and then you correct it with “But we can’t generalize about an entire group just from one example!” It’s less obvious that you may be able to provide literally one million examples of your false stereotype and still have it be a false stereotype. If you spend twelve hours a day on the task and can describe one crime every ten seconds, you can spend four months doing nothing but providing examples of burglarous Chinese – and still have absolutely no point.

If we’re really concerned about media bias, we need to think about Chinese Robber Fallacy as one of the media’s strongest weapons. There are lots of people – 300 million in America alone. No matter what point the media wants to make, there will be hundreds of salient examples. No matter how low-probability their outcome of interest is, they will never have to stop covering it if they don’t want to.

Cardiologists and Chinese Robbers

Write Flight: When White Hoops Writers Run Away from White Players

~ Mark

Most journalists have gotten over using the archaic terms of past generations. Every once in a while that coded language will flare up again (as it did during Jeremy Lin’s emergence a couple of years ago, and when Richard Sherman went off a couple of months ago) but for the most part we know better. We don’t connect ability to chromosomal sequences anymore. Well, except for white basketball players.

Not looking for pity for the white man here, but it’s something I’ve noticed, too. Thoughtful writing on race, sports journalism, and lazy thinking.

Write Flight: When White Hoops Writers Run Away from White Players

M: Roger Angell, A Hall-of-Famer at 93

~ Mark

I don’t go for nostalgia. I try not to. It’s so easy to sentimentalize the good old days, but I don’t ever do that. I’m aware that things have changed, but I try not to go there. It’s very easy, and you get sort of a mental diabetes.

I also liked this:

If you do enough reporting, then you don’t have to gush about the emerald field, the white streak of the ball, and that.

M: Roger Angell, A Hall-of-Famer at 93

Every Every Every Generation Has Been the Me Me Me Generation – The Atlantic Wire

~ Mark

Basically, it’s not that people born after 1980 are narcissists, it’s that young people are narcissists, and they get over themselves as they get older. It’s like doing a study of toddlers and declaring those born since 2010 are Generation Sociopath: Kids These Days Will Pull Your Hair, Pee On Walls, Throw Full Bowls of Cereal Without Even Thinking of the Consequences.

Every Every Every Generation Has Been the Me Me Me Generation – The Atlantic Wire

Tweetage Wasteland : Get Off My Stoop

~ Mark

The standards once applied to reporting are now often reserved for correction writing. […] If you tell me that a lunatic killed twenty kids in an elementary school, that gives me enough to process for a while. I can wait a few minutes or a few hours (or even a few days) to learn about the details about the shooter’s psyche or his relationship with his deceased mother. But these days, it seems, no one producing news can wait. But someone has to wait. Little value for journalists or their readership is created in the race to be first. We need a media that races to be right.

Tweetage Wasteland : Get Off My Stoop

Behind the Paywall: How New York Times Articles End | VF Daily | Vanity Fair

~ Mark

“Here is a list of popular endings to New York Times pieces. It’s totally free.” A few of my favorites… (via)

  • The apartment is really that small, and people really do live there, but somehow it just works for them.
  • The old restaurant/bar is unaffected by changes to its neighborhood.
  • Though restaurant’s use of sustainable ingredients attracts a young, creative clientele, buttoned-up, more conservative patrons will also enjoy the food.
  • The neighborhood’s recent gentrification has not always been a smooth cultural and economic transition for longtime residents.
  • The situation in that country you’ve been hearing about is even worse than you thought.
  • It’s not worth it to spend 36 hours in a place to which roundtrip airfare is $2,500.
  • Maureen Dowd disapproves.

Behind the Paywall: How New York Times Articles End | VF Daily | Vanity Fair

~ Mark

Graph of the year – Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science.

Bill James (and others) have pointed out that true racial equality in baseball came, not when superstars such as Jackie Robinson and Willie Mays started joining major league rosters, but when there was room for ordinary black players to join their equally unexceptional white colleagues on the bench.

Similarly, graphical methods have truly arrived when journalists use graphs to make ordinary, unexceptional points in a clearer way. When making a graph, and including it in an article, is easy enough that it’s done as a matter of course.