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This is the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s primary run in West Virginia, where a large focus of his time was spent responding to fears over his Catholicism. This is from remarks titled “The Religion Issue in American Politics” that JFK made at the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Washington, DC, April 21, 1960:

What, then, is the so-called religious issue in American politics today? It is not, it seems to me, my actual religious convictions – but a misunderstanding of what those convictions actually are. It is not the actual existence of religious voting blocs – but a suspicion that such voting blocs may exist. And when we deal with such public fears and suspicions, the American press has a very grave responsibility.

I know the press did not create this religious issue. My religious affiliation is a fact – religious intolerance is a fact. And the proper role of the press is to report all facts that are a matter of public interest.

But the press has a responsibility, I think you will agree, which goes far beyond a reporting of the facts. It goes beyond lofty editorials deploring intolerance. For my religion is hardly, in this critical year of 1960, the dominant issue of our time. It is hardly the most important criterion – or even a relevant criterion – on which the American people should make their choice for Chief Executive. And the press, while not creating the issue, will largely determine whether or not it does become dominant – whether it is kept in perspective – whether it is considered objectively – whether needless fears and suspicions are stilled instead of aroused.

The members of the press should report the facts as they find them. They should describe the issues as they see them. But they should beware, it seems to me, of either magnifying this issue or oversimplifying it. They should beware of ignoring the vital issues of this campaign, while filling their pages with analyses that cannot be proven, with statements that cannot be documented and with emphasis which cannot be justified.

I spoke in Wisconsin, for example, on farm legislation, foreign policy, defense, civil rights and several dozen other issues. The people of Wisconsin seemed genuinely interested in these addresses. But I rarely found them reported in the press – except when they were occasionally sandwiched in between descriptions of my hand-shaking, my theme-song, family haircut, and inevitably, my religion.

At almost every stop in Wisconsin I invited questions – and the questions came – on price supports, labor unions, disengagement, taxes and inflation. But there sessions were rarely reported in the press except when one topic was discussed: religion. One article, for example, supposedly summing the primary up in advance, mentioned the word Catholic 20 times in 15 paragraphs – not mentioning even once dairy farms, disarmament, labor legislation or any other issue. And on the Sunday before the Primary, the Milwaukee Journal featured a map of the state, listing county by county the relative strength of three types of voters – Democrats, Republicans and Catholics.

In West Virginia, it is the same story. As reported in yesterday’s Washington Post, the great bulk of West Virginians paid very little attention to my religion – until they read repeatedly in the nation’s press that this was the decisive issue in West Virginia. There are many serious problems in that state – problems big enough to dominate any campaign – but religion is not one of them.

I do not think that religion is the decisive issue in any state. I do not think it should be. I do not think it should be made to be. And recognizing my own responsibilities in that regard, I am hopeful that you will recognize yours also.

Sounds so timely—especially if you substitute religion for whatever (e.g. race). And considering these remarks were made 50 years ago, does that mean we can’t blame bad journalism for the downfall of news?

I was really proud of myself last week when I made what I felt was a valid and illuminating numerical comparison: I wrote that the amount of Broadband Stimulus money requested for projects within the state of Alaska—projects serving rural and underserved communities—was on a per-capita basis about equal to the federal poverty level for a 2-person household. For those of us who work on access and inclusion (and even those that don’t), that’s a much more meaningful statement than writing “about $15,000″.

I have a degree in math, but at the post-calculus level numbers serve little specialized purpose other than to check your work. One of the professors I now work beside, Marilyn Frankenstein, teaches how to make numbers relevant and meaningful by contextualizing them. She does her studies integrating mathematics and numerical literacy into social justice work (I do work within the College of Public and Community Service, after all), which all falls under Radical Math (which is a funny name if you find math funny).

That all being said, you shouldn’t provide a number without a reason. And since you’re providing the number for a reason, that reason should be apparent. If you expect someone to think “That’s a really big number” you should tell them it’s a really big number and help them understand just how big it is. A number without meaning is just data, and data is boring. If you’re giving someone data and expecting it to have meaning you’re making someone else do extra work by analyzing that data and coming to the conclusion you already have: the reason you thought the number was important in the first place.

The problem with numbers is that within the sphere of other numbers, there isn’t any reference points (other than perhaps zero). And there are a lot of them. More than you can count (hah!).

The problem with people is that we can only remember 3 or 4 things at a time. This means that we tend to bunch the infinite space of numbers into a very small number of groups: nothing, a little, a bunch, and a whole heck of a lot. The way we group things is not by some property of the number itself, but rather by the context it’s given in. By contextualizing numbers and giving them meaning, you move them from data (boring!) to useable information: it is not the numbers themselves that will stick with us, but the meaning they represent.

To show this, I made up 2 different surveys and sent them to my friends on Facebook and whoever happens to follow me on Twitter. In the first survey I asked people to place someone who makes $1 Million/year and someone who makes $1 Billion/year on a 10 point scale of Poor to Rich. Nearly all responses placed $1 Million/year between 7 and 10; and placed $1 Billion/year between 8 and 10; both very Rich. Nearly half of the responses placed both incomes as equivalent at a 10: the mostest richest.

I admit that many of my friends are Americorps alums, nonprofitty folks and other liberal ilk, but the point I want to make is that there isn’t a whole lot of difference, within the context of rich and poor, between someone who makes $1 Million/year and someone who makes $1 Billion/year. Myself, I split incomes into about 5 different levels:

• less than $12k/year: been there, done that
• $12k – $30k/year: limited fun
• $30k – $50k/year: the expected earnings potential for my career trajectory
• $50k-$100k: The job of my dreams and/or did I just go corporate?
• $100k+: Cloud 9

Now I didn’t ask people specifically about themselves, but there are a few things to notice using myself as an example. There are only a few levels (I condensed 100,000 whole numbers into just 4 groups, plus a 5th group for everything else) and there are more groups for smaller numbers than there are for larger numbers (it’s logarithmic-ish: the group sizes are 12, 18, 20, 50, infinity). Also, the numbers are in relation to what I know: what I’m making right now is in the middle and there are 2 groups above and 2 groups below.

So on to the 2nd survey: I asked people where the number 1 Million would fall on a number line between 0 and 1 Billion. This is actually a pretty  typical “aha!” classroom example and a good number of people got it right (many of my friends are also nerds). What’s interesting is the 25% percent of people (1 out of 4) who got it wrong; they chose 3, 5 or 7: exactly where you would divide a 10 point scale into quarters or maybe a few did it by thirds. That’s the expected thing to do if you don’t know this particular trick (and is also a good strategy in Trivial Pursuit).

So what’s the answer? On a 10 point scale, the answer is actually zero, but since that wasn’t an option in my survey, the most correct answer was 1.

The number 1 Billion is 1,000 times larger than the number 1 Million: and 1,000 still is a big number (hilariously, large numbers are made up of many zeros). Compared to 1 Billion, the number 1 Million is rather pale and insignificant….

…unless you’re talking about something meaningful like someone’s salary. In which case, they’re very much the same.

And if you place them in terms of money that’s been wasted through fraud, for example, then the differences should be made apparent because as I’ve shown adding a bunch of zeros just won’t do it on their own.

When numbers are placed in context to things we know and have experience with, they take on actual meaning. This is from the Pew Research Center’s Excellence in Journalism Project’s Principles of Journalism:

7. IT MUST STRIVE TO MAKE THE SIGNIFICANT INTERESTING AND RELEVANT

Journalism is storytelling with a purpose. It should do more than gather an audience or catalogue the important. For its own survival, it must balance what readers know they want with what they cannot anticipate but need. In short, it must strive to make the significant interesting and relevant. The effectiveness of a piece of journalism is measured both by how much a work engages its audience and enlightens it. This means journalists must continually ask what information has most value to citizens and in what form. While journalism should reach beyond such topics as government and public safety, a journalism overwhelmed by trivia and false significance ultimately engenders a trivial society.

I’m not saying we all should strive to be journalists, but I think we should strive to make the significant interesting and relevant. To be fair, false significance can be a powerful rhetorical device when it comes to numbers: just watch your evening news the next time they breathlessly “break” a story about public employees making “gasp!” $60k/year. “How dare they make twice the local average income level?!” …because that’s how averages work.

Another example: in my last post about doing the layout for Survival News (“the voices of low income women”), I noted that if the newspapers in circulation were spread out, they would completely cover the John Hancock Building in Boston up to its 20th floor. That’s much more fun and meaningful than only writing “4,000 copies” (the building has already been covered with plywood, so why not?).

And now to the entire reason I wrote this post: I would like to point out that at 40 tabloid-sized pages, the latest edition of Survival News has 52 square feet of copy and graphics: that’s about the same surface area as your refrigerator.

A brief history of the United State’s subsidies to journalism and the press, from The Nation’s “How to Save Journalism” by John Nichols and Robert McChesney:

Even those sympathetic to subsidies do not grasp just how prevalent they have been in American history. From the days of Washington, Jefferson and Madison through those of Andrew Jackson to the mid-nineteenth century, enormous printing and postal subsidies were the order of the day. The need for them was rarely questioned, which is perhaps one reason they have been so easily overlooked. They were developed with the intention of expanding the quantity, quality and range of journalism–and they were astronomical by today’s standards. If, for example, the United States had devoted the same percentage of its GDP to journalism subsidies in 2009 as it did in the 1840s, we calculate that the allocation would have been $30 billion. In contrast, the federal subsidy last year for all of public broadcasting, not just journalism, was around $400 million.

The experience of America’s first century demonstrates that subsidies of the sort we suggest pose no threat to democratic discourse; in fact, they foster it. Postal subsidies historically applied to all newspapers, regardless of viewpoint. Printing subsidies were spread among all major parties and factions. Of course, some papers were rabidly partisan, even irresponsible. But serious historians of the era are unanimous in holding that the extraordinary and diverse print culture that resulted from these subsidies built a foundation for the growth and consolidation of American democracy. Subsidies made possible much of the abolitionist press that led the fight against slavery.

Our research suggests that press subsidies may well have been the second greatest expense of the federal budget of the early Republic, following the military. This commitment to nurturing and sustaining a free press was what was truly distinctive about America compared with European nations that had little press subsidy, fewer newspapers and magazines per capita, and far less democracy. This history was forgotten by the late nineteenth century, when commercial interests realized that newspaper publishing bankrolled by advertising was a goldmine, especially in monopolistic markets. Huge subsidies continued to the present, albeit at lower rates than during the first few generations of the Republic. But today’s direct and indirect subsidies–which include postal subsidies, business tax deductions for advertising, subsidies for journalism education, legal notices in papers, free monopoly licenses to scarce and lucrative radio and TV channels, and lax enforcement of anti-trust laws–have been pocketed by commercial interests even as they and their minions have lectured us on the importance of keeping the hands of government off the press. It was the hypocrisy of the current system–with subsidies and government policies made ostensibly in the public interest but actually carved out behind closed doors to benefit powerful commercial interests–that fueled the extraordinary growth of the media reform movement over the past decade.

This lede is the baseline from which I think any discussion of contemporary journalism should begin:

There have been various proposals to “save journalism” from the crisis brought on by digitalization. But by and large these ideas have less to do with meeting the information needs of a democratic society than with preserving the profit potential of existing media outlets.

The one change I would make is to put “crisis” also in quotation marks in order to show that the crisis-metaphor is just one frame pushed by incumbent media outlets. Another frame would be “new opportunities” or “focus shift” or “changing landscape”. The above is from “Public Media and the Decommodification of News” published in FAIR’s (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting) Extra!

In the story writing process, I find creating lead-ins to be simplest, while crafting an actual story around it to be a difficult task. This morning I came up with the following, but was disappointed to find that the AP had done me one better:

bq. Jerrod Rines is a pickup owning, Mexican stomping, full-blooded American–one-quarter Irish, one-quarter Italian, three-eighths German, and Lithuanian the rest. Long ago he made a point to avoid reading anything except street signs and engine maintenance manuals. Because of all of this, Jerrod Rines faced this morning’s mail with great trepidation: a square and solitary alabaster envelope bearing, in black flowing print, the return address of “Mr J Singh and Ms. T James.”

bq. Jerrod Rines’ only daughter is getting married.

The following is what I read in the Metro, Boston’s premier rag (the Herald isn’t even fit for wiping). Written by an Associated Press writer, Ken Maguire, in one sentence it evokes in me many of the same feelings my writing above seeks to create.

bq. _*Five students with state ties to be Rhodes Scholars*_
*Boston* Amherst native Nicholas Juravich learned about the societal inequities he hopes to study as a Rhodes Scholar during his regular runs through Chicago’s neighborhoods.

For the record, I do not question Mr. Jurovich’s dedication to his cause, merely the way in way in which it is presented.